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THE

RAILROAD SYSTEM

O V

CALIFORNIA.

OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

STATE UNIVERSITY, ETC.

J. II. CARMANY & CO., PRINTERS,
"Overland Monthly" Printing House, 409 Washington Street, San Francis

1871.

CONTEN T S .

Page.

Introductory 2

The Railroad System of California. . . .4 to 6

The Central Pacific 6

The Central Pacific San Joaquin Branch. 6
The Branch from Banta, via Antioch and

Martinez, to Oakland 6

The California and Oregon 6

The California Pacific, and the X. S. F.

and Humboldt 7

The Woodland and Red Bluff Branch ... 7

The Southern Pacific 7

The Valley Route 8

The Southern Pacific Coast Route 8

The Memphis and El Paso 9

The Stockton and Copperopolis 9

What the C. P. R. R. has been Doing . . 9

Distances 11

Table of Distances 12

Oakland and Vicinity — The City Gov-
ernment 13

The Past, Present, and Future of Oak-
land 13

The Water Front 15

The Estuary of San Antonio 16

Climate 17

Soil and Productions 18

The Natural Supply of Water 18

The Contra Costa Water Company 19

Water Resources 20

Streets 21

Grades 21

Sewers 22

Page.

Stone Quarries 22

Rain Table for Oakland 23

The Philosophy of Grain Growing 23

Sanitary and Mortuary 24

Drives and Scenery 25

What Nature has Done 26

Street Railroads 26

Oakland Gas-light Company 27

Land Titles 27

The Price of Homestead Sites 28

Building Improvements in Oakland 29

Cost of Building 29

Manufacturing Prospects 30

Bridging the Bay 30

Estimated Cost of Bridging the Bay. ... 31

The University of California 34

Private Educational Institutions 38

Public Schools 39

Churches 40

The Mountain View Cemetery 41

Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, and

Blind 41

Societies and Associations. 42

Alameda County Medical Association ... 43

Military Companies 44

Oakland Bank of Savings 44

Union Savings Bank 44

Newspapers 45

Brooklyn 45

Alameda, and the Webster-street Bridge. 45

The Local Railroad and Ferry 46

Alameda County Statistics 48

THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA.

We publish, herewith, a reliable and interesting map of the railroad system of
California which is concentrating at Oakland ; also, a map of Oakland and its en-
virons. In the following pages the reader will find a full explanation of both.

THE TWO GREAT COMPANIES.

The Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific now own, or control, all the rail-
roads and railroad routes which are shown on the map, except the Stockton and
Copperopolis, and the projected line from San Diego to Fort Mohave. Although
distinct organizations, the affairs of the two companies are controlled by the same
men. The concentration of the railroad system at Oakland may be regarded as a
fixed fact.

NATURE HAS ORDAINED IT.

The trunk lines in California which have been subsidized by Government, were
projected with more reference to subsidies than to the economy of railroad com-
merce. Of this, the Western and the Southern Pacific are notable instances.
The Mt. Diablo range, extending south until it joins the Coast range, near San
Luis Obispo, is the great obstacle to direct communication, by rail, between San
Francisco and the interior, south of the 38th parallel.

THE LIVERMORE AND THE PANOCHE PASSES

Are, respectively, the routes of the Western Pacific and the Southern Pacific-
The altitude of the former is 686 feet; that of the latter is 2,200 feet; and these
are the most available passes in the range. Every 20 feet rise in a railroad grade
is equivalent to an additional mile of level track; and every 360 degrees curvature
is equivalent to a loss of half a mile.* Hence, the distance from Bantaf to Niles$

* Equating for Grades. — The result of experiments, carefully conducted, gives as the resistance to
motion of one ton, moving on a well-built level railroad, about i]A pounds, or the weight which, hanging
freely over a pulley, will overcome the friction of one ton. This resistance to motion is a constant fraction of
the weight moved, and is its i - 264th part. This is the friction of the load. If, now, the plane be elevated
from a level to a rise of 1 - 264th its length, according to well - known mechanical laws, one pound will, on this
plane, sustain 264 pounds, or 8^ pounds will sustain one ton ; and the fraction, 1 - 264, representing a rise of 20
feet in a mile, it follows that on this grade the effect of gravity is equal to that of friction, and in order to
produce motion up this grade, twice the power must be applied that would be required were it on a level ; and
as it is a well-known mechanical law that the same amount of power is expended in raising a weight through
a given height, whatever may be the angle of the plane upon which the motion is effected, it follows that for

4 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA.

(see map and table of distances) being 44 miles, we must add 34 miles to arrive at
its equivalent in level track, which would be 78 miles. We leave the loss by curv-
atures out of the question at present. After experiencing the enormous expense of
running this part of the road, and keeping it in repair, the Company is about con-
structing a branch from Banta, to run around the mountains, via Antioch and
Martinez, to Oakland. By this route trains can be brought

FROM THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY TO OAKLAND ON A LEVEL ROAD.

The distance from Banta to Antioch, over a level plain, is 30 miles ; from
Antioch to Martinez, via the shore, 18 miles ; from Martinez to Oakland, via shore
and valley, 31 miles — making, in all, 79 miles, with no curvatures of consequence.
Now, considering the loss by curvatures and grades, on the mountain roads ; the
expense of keeping extra engines constantly on duty ; the excessive wear and tear,
etc., etc. — the reader can understand what he would not suspect from merely ex-
amining the map, to wit : that passengers and freight from the San Joaquin Valley,
and from all the country east of Banta, tributary to the Western Pacific, will be
transported from Banta to Oakland, via Martinez, much quicker, and very much
cheaper, than it is possible to transport them from Banta to Niles — a point 22
miles south from Oakland, and 40 miles from Mission Bay, San Francisco, even
by the much talked of route via Ravenswood and the " shore line."

The obstacles to be encountered on the proposed line of the Southern Pacific
in crossing the Mt. Diablo Range, via Panoche Pass, are much more serious than
those in the Livermore crossing. In the fifty miles breadth of mountains between
Hollister and the San Joaquin Valley, the sinuosities of the road will be unprece-
dented, and the elevation to be overcome (2,200 feet) will add an equivalent of no
miles, as compared with a level road. It is practically nearer from the Junction
(north of Tulare Lake), via the valley route, to Banta, than from .the Junction to the
summit of the Panoche Pass ; and the Southern Pacific trains, starting from the
Junction, will reach Oakland, via the valley route, Banta, and Martinez, sooner
than it will be possible for them to reach Gilroy, via the mountain road.

every 20 feet in height that we ascend on a railroad, we expend an amount of power equivalent to the trans-
port of that weight over one mile of level ; and this holds true whatever the grade may be. Equating for
grades with a view to a comparison of lines, then, consists in Imding to the measured distance one mile for
each and every twenty feet of ascent on the respective routes. — Appleton's Encyclopedia of Mechanics.
Equating for Curves. — Direct motions on levels or inclines are affected less by disturbing causes than
motion in curves ; for, in addition to the irregularities growing out of the imperfections of the curved track
and the varying elements of the curved motion in practice, are to be added all the disturbing causes which
exist in the first case. This has, as yet, prevented that rigorous solution of the latter problem, which is to be
desired, and which is essential to a true comparison, a priori, of the cost of movement on curved roads. It
is, as yet, entirely an empirical formula deduced from a few experiments, but has been used for the purpose of
comparison of routes by distinguished engineers, and is the best we can offer with our present knowledge of
the subject. We find by the experiments referred to above, that a curve of 400 feet radius doubles the resist-
ance. In propelling a train, then, through an entire circumference of such a curve, we expend twice the
power that would be consumed in traveling an equal distance in a right line. Taking, then, the analogy
afforded by motion on ascents as compared with levels as a guide, and we conclude that the same power
would be expended in turning through an entire circle, whatever may be its radius, (this, of course, must be
understood as confined to certain limits) ; hence, for every circle of 360 degrees, we must add for the expen-
diture of power on a right line of the same length, the circumference of a circle described with the radius of
double resistance, found by experiment as above to be 400 feet ; this will be half a mile. Equating for curves
consists, then, in adding to the measured distance one-half mile for each and every three hundred and
sixty degi-ees of curvature on the respective routes. — Appleton's Encyclopedia of Mechanics.

t Banta is on the line of the Western Pacific, three miles west of the San Joaquin River.

X Niles is on the Alameda Plain, opposite to the gap where the railroad enters the hills.

THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA. 5

According to General Palmer's report, grades will be encountered in the
Panoche Pass where it will require four or five extra engines to perform what one
engine will accomplish on the valley road. Thus, in railroading, it is true that a
pot -handle is longer standing up than lying down ; and that the longest way round
is often the shortest way home.

Enough has been said to demonstrate that the great passenger and freight
route to Oakland and San Francisco will - »

APPROACH OAKLAND FROM THE NORTH.

The road from Martinez to Oakland will also constitute the connecting link of the
"air-line road" between. San Francisco and the Central Pacific overland road, via
Sacramento ; between San Francisco and the road to Puget's Sound, traversing a
continuous line of productive valleys in California, Oregon, and Washington ; it will
connect with the projected road which will tap the Sacramento Valley west of the
river, and extend to Red Bluff; it will unite with the system of roads which are
tapping Napa, Sonoma, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and the Russian River Valleys.

THE LINE APPROACHING US FROM THE SOUTH,

Even though it can not successfully tap the San Joaquin Valley, is yet of much
importance. The Santa Clara Valley, alone, embraces a vast area of highly product-
ive land, and is capable of supporting a larger population than some of the New
England States. Extending southerly to Santa Barbara is a succession of smaller
valleys, to which we will hereafter refer. That section of the Southern Pacific
road west of the Panoche Pass, in connection with the projected Coast Line, will,
therefore, do a large business, both in passengers and freight. San Jose* — the
point of divergence of the roads running north — is ten miles nearer Oakland than
San Francisco. The Oakland road is level, and the San Francisco road has
severe grades. Supposing, however, the places were equidistant, and the roads
equally level, the export products would seek Oakland, . where the economy of
shipping exceeds the possibilities at San Francisco.

TERMINAL FACILITIES.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company has secured, in and about Oakland,
facilities for the conjunction of railroad and water traffic unequaled in the world,
and unattainable elsewhere on the Pacific Coast. It owns, in fee simple forever,
an area of seventy acres fronting on the Bay, in the western part of the city, which
it purchased as a site for machine-shops, etc. It also owns an area of three hun-
dred and fifty acres on the water front, extending from the former tract toward
Goat Island, with a frontage of nearly half a mile on ship channel. It also owns
extensive reservations on the southern bank of the estuary of San Antonio, and
it has secured the right of way for tracks leading to them from the main trunk.
It also owns, in proximity to Oakland, ninety acres of land suitable for a car-yard
and other uses ; and a large tract of hilly ground whence it can obtain, ad libitum,
earth and gravel for filling purposes.

The improvements at ship channel are described elsewhere in an article taken
from the Alta; but instead of being completed, as the Alta presumed, they con-
stitute a small part of a grand design. The Company is exempt from the opera-
tion of State and municipal laws respecting wharfage, dockage, and tolls ; and it
imposes no charges upon vessels receiving or delivering freight.

6 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA.

Infinite credit is due Messrs. Stanford & Co. for having thus early secured the
estate and franchises which will afford such invaluable and unbounded terminal
facilities ; and it is a subject for congratulation to the people of the coast at large
that, while the railroad system is developing industrial resources with unexampled
rapidity, means are assured for the most economical handling of exports and
imports. The reflection that the most productive farming, pasture, vineyard, and
orchard lands of California and Oregon are being placed in direct communication
with ships floating in the waters of the Pacific, and with the entire railroad system
of the United States, is suggestive of an export commerce that will soon turn the
balance of trade in our favor, and keep more of our gold at home.

THE CENTRAL PACIFIC

Track commences on the Oakland water front at 26% feet of water, (at low tide),
where Goat Island makes a lee in "north-westers," and the Alameda Encinal
breaks the force of "south-easters." The main trunk runs thence, southerly, to
Vallejo's Mill (see map), from which point it runs eastwardly through Livermore
Pass, traversing the Sufiol, Amador, Livermore, San Joaquin, and Sacramento
Valleys, to the Sierra Nevada, passing through Stockton and Sacramento on the
route across the continent. A branch is in operation southerly from Vallejo's
Mill to San Jose, connecting with the line of the Southern Pacific which is now
built to Gilroy, and is being extended southerly toward the Panoche Pass. We
will omit descriptive details of the road and route, inasmuch as the public are
familiarized with both.

THE CENTRAL PACIFIC SAN JOAQUIN BRANCH

Is one of the most important feeders of the Central Pacific main trunk. It inter-
sects the main, trunk eight miles westerly from Stockton, and runs southerly forty
miles, through a portion of the great San Joaquin Valley, surnamed "Paradise" —
one of the most thickly settled agricultural districts in California. In proportion
to its length, it is, perhaps, the most valuable "feeder" which the Company could
have constructed. It is now being extended to meet the agricultural developments
of the San Joaquin Valley, and will eventually intersect the trunk line of the South-
ern Pacific, in the neighborhood of Tulare Lake. Thus, the empire valley of the
Pacific Coast is destined to be traversed by two great roads ; and the time will
come when both will require numerous branches, to accommodate the vast breadth
of arable country which the valley embraces.

THE BRANCH FROM BANTA, VIA ANTIOCH AND MARTINEZ, TO OAKLAND,

Has already been described, but it is destined to work so important a part in our
railroad system, that we recur to it, under a special heading. It is the solution of
a State problem. Our most extensive wheat - districts, and our coal-mines, will
have a level road to. the sea.

• THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON.

This road, which is to concentrate the trade of the north and bring it to the
Bay of San Francisco, is being constructed by the Central Pacific Railroad Com-
pany. A valuable land grant is stimulating the work. It is now completed from
Sacramento to Tehama — 123 miles. While a full force is being employed in its
northward extension, the Company is preparing to make the connection between
Sacramento and Oakland by the shortest possible route. The engineers have

THE -RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA. y

found a route of eighty-three miles, on which no grade will be encountered exceed-
ing ten feet to the mile. It crosses the straits in the neighborhood of Martinez,
where it will intersect the road from Banta to Oakland.

It is remarkable that neither the press nor the people of San Francisco have
manifested the slightest solicitude for the railroad trade from the north, even
when there was danger of losing it, while they have been subject to intermittent
fever concerning that from the south, of which they have always been assured, but
which is neither now, nor prospectively, half as important as the former.

THE CALIFORNIA PACIFIC, AND THE N. S. F. AND HUMBOLDT*

Comprise the road extending from Vallejo to Marysville, with a branch to Sacra-
mento ; the road from Calistoga to Napa ; and the system of roads, and projected
roads in Sonoma, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and Russian River Valleys. Prior to
the purchase of these lines by the Central Pacific, Vallejo promised to be an im-
portant terminus, and Donohue had no small pretensions. Both places are likely
to remain important points for local trade ; but when the California and Oregon
Road makes its connection with Oakland, the concentrating tendency of commerce
will be illustrated for the ten-thousandth time.

THE WOODLAND AND RED BLUFF BRANCH

Which will traverse the richest part of the Sacramento Valley, west of the river,
for a hundred miles, is a projected road, much needed, and one that will assuredly
be constructed in a few years. There is no valley in the State that would yield
quicker or richer returns to a railroad.

THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC.

The original franchise of this Company extended "from the waters of the Bay
of San Francisco to a point on the Colorado River, at or near Fort Mohave,"
where it meets that of the Atlantic and Pacific. It has since obtained from Con-
gress a land-grant for a branch from the Tehachepa Pass, via Los Angeles, to Fort
Yuma where it will intersect the line of the Memphis and El Paso. The topog-
raphy of the country does not admit of a more direct route.

The tardiness in the prosecution of the work is attributable to the great diffi-
culties encountered in crossing the Mt. Diablo Range. The Livermore Pass hav-
ing been secured by the Western Pacific, the Southern Pacific was given the op-
tion of taking any one of four passes farther south, to wit: the Pacheco, Panoche,
San Benito, or Cholame.* Much time, and immense labor, have been expended
in seeking the most available route.

The report of General William Palmer on surveys across the continent, on the
35th parallel of latitude, published in 1868, throws light on this interesting subject.

The surveys were begun at Fort Wallace, in western Kansas, in July, 1867, by
three well -organized parties of engineers, under General W. W. Wright. Two
additional parties, under Colonel William H. Greenwood, were subsequently sent
out, increasing the corps to five parties comprising about one hundred men, be-
sides the military escorts, teamsters, etc. The work was thorough and exhaust-
ive. It extended over the mountainous regions and arid plains, and the contin-
gencies of climate and seasons were investigated.

*On the map filed with the Secretary of the Interior, the route takes the San Benito ; but an Act of Con-
gress allows the Company to cross the mountains within thirty miles on either side, " or as near as may be."

S THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA.

The line recommended for reaching the Tulare Valley from the east, crosses
the Colorado River about twenty-five miles below Fort Mohave, and traverses the
Mohave Plains to the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada. The Tehachepa Pass,
about forty miles east and north of Tejon, was found to be the best at which to
cross that great range. The elevation of the summit is 4,008* feet above tide,
while at the Donner Lake Pass, where the Central Pacific Railroad crosses the
same range, the altitude exceeds 7,000 feet.

Descending from the Tehachepa into the Tulare and San Joaquin Valleys,
GeneraJ Palmer sought a route through the Mt. Diablo Range by one of the four
passes before-mentioned. Of these, the Panoche was the only pass instrumentally
examined, the elevation of which was found to be about 2,200 feet above tide. The
grades in 38 miles, from Tulare Plain across the Coast range, are as follows : 7
miles, of 106 feet per mile, ascending westward; 6 miles, of 116 feet per mile, de-
scending westward ; and the remaining 25 miles ranging from 50 to 85 feet. (Gen-
eral Palmer's Report, p. 71.)

The elevations of the three other passes, as ascertained by the barometer, are
as follow: Pacheco, 1,470 feet; San Benito, 2,750 feet; Cholame, 2,000 feet.
The lowest, Pacheco, is described by General Palmer as being the most difficult
of all. A peculiarity of the whole range, is the abruptness of the slopes from the
Summit to the San Joaquin and Tulare Valleys. All the passes are easily ap-
proached from the westward ; but steep, and in some cases impracticable, grades
are required to make the descent into the valley. The sand formation of the
country is also exceedingly unfavorable for the construction and maintenance of
railroads.

The vast amount of subsequent surveying has failed to develop a more favora-
ble route for reaching San Francisco from the south, than the one recommended
by General Palmer.

While the subsidy amply justifies the building of the road through Panoche
Pass,

THE VALLEY ROUTE

Which will traverse the level plain (the average gradient being less than two feet
to the mile) on an air line from the Junction to Banta, connecting with the branch
road from Banta, via Martinez, to Oakland, will be — as elsewhere explained —
much the quicker and cheaper approach to San Francisco from the Tehachepa
Pass, and from every part of the Tulare and San Joaquin Valleys.

The country tributary to the mountain route is comparatively unproductive,
while that tributary to the valley route is remarkable for its immense agricultural
resources.

THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC COAST ROUTE,

As shown on the map — extending from Gilroy to Los Angeles — was projected by
General Rosecrans, and originally designed to connect with the Memphis and El
Paso Road, at Fort Yuma. As its name indicates, it now belongs to the Southern
Pacific Railroad Company. The route traverses a chain of valleys from Gilroy to
Santa Barbara which, though not comparable in extent to the valleys farther in-
land, are remarkable for salubrity of climate and fertility of soil. From Santa Bar-
bara to Los Angeles, the country is rough and broken, presenting serious engineer-
ing difficulties. The building of the Memphis and El Paso Road would stimulate

* The great breadth of the '-ange renders the grades comparatively easy.

THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA. 9

the building of this projected coast road, and cause its extension beyond Los An-
geles to Fort Yuma, thus making the connection with Oakland and San Francisco.
The old proverb, "All roads lead to Rome," has a significant application to our
railroad system — terminal expenses and transshipping facilities rendering it an
economical necessity.

THE MEMPHIS AND EL PASO.

This enterprise was one of the first of the Pacific Railroad projects presented
to the public, and it has been prosecuted with varying fortunes for sixteen years.
The Company was organized in 1854, and received a valuable land grant from the
State of Texas. Work was soon after commenced, and about two hundred and
fifty miles of the road have been graded and put in operation. The late civil war
caused a suspension of the work, and the exhaustion of the South has" until quite
recently, prevented its resumption. Last winter, a bill passed Congress granting
a subsidy to encourage the building of the road.

THE STOCKTON AND COPPEROPOUS

Is a local road, designed to connect Stockton and Copperopolis. Fifteen miles of
it has been constructed, and the road is in operation that far, easterly from
Stockton.

[From the San Francisco Alta California.]

WHAT THE C. P. R. R. GO. HAS BEEN

A wharf, 11,000 feet long, running out to a depth of 26^ feet at low tide, and
33^4 feet at high tide, in a bay like that of San Francisco, having twelve railroad
tracks upon its last one thousand feet, a wide carriage way, a spacious passenger
depot and railroad offices, warehouses and outside storage for 40,000 tons of grain
or other merchandise, three large docks, one of which affords ample space for fiw
of the largest steamers or clippers afloat, is not often seen, even in this age of rail-
road and engineering wonders. Such a structure has, however, recently been com-
pleted by the Central Pacific Railroad Company on the Oakland or easterly side of
the Bay of San Francisco. The extreme end of the main wharf is only three miles
from the foot of Second Street, where freight is landed in this city, and is less than
two and a half miles from the foot of Pacific Street, where passengers are set down
on this (San Francisco) side.

It would be much more difficult to build such a long wharf with safety on our
side of the bay, because the bottom here is a yielding mud ; but on the Oakland
side there is a hard clay bottom. Another point in favor of Oakland is that the
destructive marine wood -eating worm, the teredo, is not found there at all. In
these facts lie two of the greatest elements of strength and ability to bear great
burdens of the new railway wharves across the bay, but only two of them. Noth-
ing has been neglected in the quality of material used, and workmanship employed,

io THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA.

to make the wharves the very best ever built in the United States. Experts in the
construction of such work, and army and other engineers who are familiar with
like structures in Europe and America, all agree in saying that for engineering
skill, mechanical execution, and solidity and excellence of all the material employ-
ed, the work is not surpassed by any they ever examined. To make this plain, a
few descriptive figures must be given. The piles used, where the water deepens,
are 65 feet long, and are 42 to 54 inches in circumference, or as heavy as the main-
mast of the largest clipper. They are all of the very best pine, which for lasting
qualities under water is one of the very best kinds of wood. The main wharf — for
a thousand feet east of the latter there are two wharves, one for Oakland local
trains, and one for the regular freight and passenger cars of the through overland
road — is 800 feet wide at the extreme or western end, and on it are pens for 500
cattle, two immense warehouses (one 50x500, another 62x600), with the passenger
depot, 75 x 305 in size. The piles were driven into the bottom to a depth of 18 feet.
They are set 10 feet apart, parallel with the course of the wharf, and 6 and 7 feet
apart across it. In the docks, or slips, there is a double row of spring or fend- off
piles, and the regularity and neatness with which they are laid is especially worthy
of attention and admiration. Those who will examine the old slips into which the
steamers used to run, or who remember thosa used at the Brooklyn (New York)
ferries, will be able to appreciate the superiority of the Central Pacific slips. The
upright piles on the last one thousand feet of the main wharf, are braced with im-
mense cross piles and iron anchors. Trains of heavily loaded freight cars pass
over this gigantic structure with as little jar as over solid ground.

The massive new freight ferry-boat of the Central Pacific Company has been
completed, and is now running from the Company's extensive wharves, at the foot
of Second Street, in this city, to the Company's wharves and docks above describ-
ed, on the Oakland side of the bay. The boat carries 16 loaded cars on each trip,
and has, in addition, pens for 300 cattle. She can carry from 1,000 to 1,280 tons
each way per day, making the trip across the bay (3 miles) in forty minutes, when
loaded. A railroad now connects the Pacific Mail Company's dock and the Cen-
tral Pacific wharf on this side, by means of which the cargoes of the China steam-
ers can be immediately discharged into the Central Pacific freight cars, and thus
the utmost dispatch will be attained in the shipment of teas, silks, and other fast
freight intended for the Atlantic States and Europe.

The Central Pacific Company owns all of the Oakland water-front on which its
vast wharves are built. It has its own docks there, capable, as we have shown, of
accommodating five of the largest clippers or steamers at a time. In future, all
grain, ores, wool, wine, and other merchandise that are to be shipped to Europe or
elsewhere, by water, will be discharged directly on shipboard from the cars at the
end of the Company's wharf, while all steamers or other craft which come into this
port with Oriental cargoes for the Atlantic States, will go direct to the Company's
docks and unload into the cars. In this way, heavy wharfage, tolls, loss of time,
double handling and its onerous attendant costs, will be avoided.

In addition to the main overland line, the Central Pacific Company owns the
California and Oregon Railroad, which is now completed to Tehama, 123 miles
above Sacramento, toward Oregon ; the San Joaquin Valley Road, which is com-
pleted to the Tuolumne River; the San Jose branch, from Niles' Station, and the
Alameda and Oakland Railroad. The two first- named branches of the Central
Pacific line run through our two great valleys — the Sacramento and San Joaquin.

THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA. n

No country on earth offers a more princely traffic to railroads than do these two
vast empire valleys.

In the building of these deep-water wharves and warehouses, the Central
Pacific Company has omitted nothing which would tend to facilitate business and
reduce expenses on the Company's railroads. Mr. S. S. Montague, the Chief
Engineer of the Central Pacific Road, and Mr. Arthur Brown, who built all the
Howe truss - bridges on the road, planned and built the great wharves and ware-
houses which we have described, and the whole work stands as a fresh monument
of the engineering talent of the one, and the mechanical skill and ability of the
other.*

CONCLUSION.

Railroad companies conserve their own interests best, when they promote the
interests of the public. The Central, and the Southern Pacific, in seeking the
patronage and sympathetic cooperation of the populations for whose necessities
they intend to provide, will operate with the greatest possible economy to the
public, and to themselves. To do this, they must seek the nearest point at deep
water, convenient to the sea, by such routes as are, equivalently, the shortest and
cheapest. Oakland is that point. The Mt. Diablo Range must be removed, or
split asunder, before the figures we have quoted, in equating for grades and curves,
can be controverted. And what do they demonstrate ?

First, that even if the Bay were bridged at Ravenswood, and a shore -line road
extended, thence, to Mission Bay, trains leaving Banta for Oakland, via Martinez,
would reach Oakland before similar trains leaving Banta, at the same time, for
San Francisco, via Livermore Pass and Ravenswood, could get within forty miles
of San Francisco.

Second, that the Southern Pacific trains, starting from a given point in the
Tulare Valley, will reach Oakland, by the valley route, before said trains could get
within eighty miles of San Francisco, via the mountain road.

Third, that a bridge at Ravenswood would be, to San Francisco, a bridge of

DISTANCES.

In columns A, B, and E, of the following table, the measured distances are
given, except in cases wherein they have not been made public. In these cases
they have been computed by engineers who are familiar with the general topog-
raphy of the country. In columns C, and D, the respective elevations of the
Livermore and Panoche Passes have been taken into account ; and in conformity
with the established rules in equating for grades, (see note, page 3), 34 miles have
been added to the measured distance through the former pass, and 1 10 miles to the
computed distance through the latter, to compensate for grades.

This gives the reader an intelligent idea of the equivalent, or practical, distances,
via the several routes, relative to the power required for transportation by rail, in

* While according infinite praise to Messrs. Montague and Brown for their genius in designing, no less
praise is due to Mr. A. R. Guppy, the accomplished and indefatigable engineer who directed and superin-
tended the work. We will add that the work done is only a small part of that which is projected.

12 THE RAILROAD SYSTEM OF CALIFORNIA.

ascending grades. It does not, however, impart what should be understood
respecting the time consumed oa steep grades, as compared with level road. To
prevent the "iron horse" from running away with the train, in descending such
grades, it is necessary to "down brakes," and "go slow." Thus, generally, the
descent requires as much time as the ascent, and the rules in equating for speed
tell heavily against mountain roads. Nor, has the loss by curvature been esti-
mated, either in the foregoing remarks, or in the following table — the loss by
grades being amply sufficient to sustain all that is claimed in the text.

It is apparent that the level road to the sea, which will run around the mount-
ains, and approach Oakland from the north, must become the great trunk line of
both the Central, and Southern Pacific. .

The distance from Oakland to Martinez is computed, as will be observed, at
31 miles. There is reason for believing that the railroad company has located a
line between the two places that will not exceed 26 miles in length ; but the former
figures are adopted in the table, as the maximum.

FROM OAKLAND- TO

B
p.

£.

0 5'
0

S3 »
P N

• 3.

<
0

» <

0
a

O O

K 0

<
S'

79
95

100
116
164

86^
119
210
704

69
5°
74

c ^ *

Healdsburg

279

739

192
300
760

108

Red Bluff

210

40
70

83
310
410

Gilroy

227
327

248

?a8

The distance from Niles in a direct line across the Bay to Ravenswood is 13
miles; thence to Mission Bay, San Francisco, via "shore line," 27 miles — total
distance from Niles to San Francisco, 40 miles, as against 22 miles from Niles to
Oakland. San Jose is 50 miles from San Francisco, and but 40 miles from Oak-
land.

OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

>4. :

So*

THE CITY GOVERNMENT.

Mayor, N. W. Spaulding.

City Council — E. H. Pardee, President; J. V. B. Goodrich, T. J. Murphy, A.
L. Warner, C. D. Haven, W. J. Gurnett, W. S. Snook.

Board of Education — L. Hamilton, President; E. W. Playter, G. W. Armes,
R. E. Cole, Jacob Bacon, W. Van Dyke, J. W. Thurman.

City Clerk and Treasurer, H. Hillebrand.

City Marshal and Tax Collector, Perry Johnson.

Police Judge, A. H. Jayne.

Police Commissioners — N. W. Spaulding, E. H. Pardee, and Perry Johnson.

City Assessor, Joseph M. Dillon.

Justices of the Peace, .... James Lentell and G. H. Fogg.

Superintendent of Public Schools, . . . . F. M. Campbell.

Appointed Officers — T. J. Arnold, City Engineer; H. H. Havens, City At-
torney; George Taylor, Pound Master; Miles Doody, Chief Engineer of Fire
Department.

Police Department — F. B. Tarbett, Captain of Police; D. H. Rand and E.
H. Woolsey, Detectives; W. P. Brandt, G. H. Moore, W. H. Summers, John
A. Moore, Spencer Pool, H. C. Emmons, George H. Carlton, C. P. McKay,
Regular- Officers; A. Shorey, A. Wilson, G. F. Blake, G. H. Tilly, Special
Officers.

[From the Oakland Transcript]

THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF OAKLAND.

The centralization of society, the development of industries, and the current of
trade, being subjects of general interest, the following synoptic review and brief
deductions concerning the locality of Oakland are appropriate at the present time.

Before Oakland existed, San Francisco had become the great centre of popu-
lation and trade on the North Pacific Coast. Admirably situated for deep-sea and
inland water traffic, wealth was attracted to her lap. This stimulated the enter-
prise of her people, and made her what she is. Sacramento, Stockton, San Jose",
Benicia, Vallejo, Sonoma, Petaluma, (to say nothing of numerous mountain towns^

U OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

which dot the map of California), all acquired considerable importance before Oak-
land was heard of.

On New Year's Day, 1 851, the site of Oakland was known only as a part of
the Peralta Rancho. Wild cattle roamed where now, surrounded by all that per-
tains to modern civilization, more than eleven thousand people are living. The
sound of church - organs and college -bells now reverberates where, then, nothing
but the bellowing of animals interrupted the stillness of nature. In the place of
the old cattle - trails are railroads and macadamized streets ; and where the cattle
lazily roamed, we now witness thirty-two daily passenger trains, to say nothing of
freight trains, rushing to and fro, propelled by the mighty power of steam. Even
the wild flowers, that once bedecked the surface of the earth, exist only by suffer-
ance, and a cultivated flora has usurped their place.

Considering that Oakland was but a second thought in California ; considering
the long litigation concerning land titles— now happily settled ; considering that
one-fourth the area of the city has been held in check for the want of public thor-
oughfares— the circumstance of her extraordinary development, the statistics of
which we publish elsewhere, affords a useful lesson for economists.

Our space is inadequate to a full exposition of the subject, but we will dwell
upon it sufficiently to explain "the milk in the cocoanut;" and to show that more
extraordinary results will inevitably succeed those which it has been our privilege
to witness.

For several years after the acquisition of California by the United States, men
"planted their stakes" on the exclusive basis of the gold and silver crop, and the
trade which mining would develop. Moreover, in their calculations concerning
prospective developments, ships, steamboats, and mule-teams were relied upon as
the only means of transportation. In short, a single branch of industry was the
incentive to action, and the Locomotive was not even expected within the time pop-
ularly allotted for making "a pile."

The Locomotive has not only revolutionized the carrying trade, but, while add-
ing importance to mining industry, it has stimulated agriculture to the front rank,
and opened many fields for diversified labor. The gold and silver crop can be
"packed" from the mountains to the .sea on the backs of mules, and requires not
much tonnage to transport it from continent to continent ; but the wheat, wine,
wool, and fruit crops will annually require hundreds of vessels and thousands of
railroad trains.

The statistics, and our remarks elsewhere, will show what the Locomotive has
thus far done for Oakland, in connection with educational establishments, and nat-
ural advantages of climate, soil, and topography. Respecting the present, we will
only say, here, that there is no other city, in or out of California, the population of
which includes so large a proportion of the well-educated class.

Referring to the changes produced, and being produced, by railroads, the un-
biased reader need only examine the map to see that there can be no great termi-
nus at ship -channel in the Bay of San Francisco, except at Oakland. An "air-
line road," so called, will soon be made from Sacramento to Oakland, and engineers
are in the field to determine the shortest route.

Plans are almost completed for dredging the bar at the mouth of San Antonio
Estuary, and making the estuary available for commercial purposes. An impor-
tant consideration, in connection with the vast amount of piling already done, and
the vaster amount in contemplation, is the absence of the teredo, or "pile -worm."

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 15

Scientific men attribute this to the fact that the flood-tide through Raccoon Straits
throws the fresh water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin, far over to the east
side of the Bay; and the pressure of the flood, south of Angel Island, crowds
it sufficiently to cause a portion of it to pass between Oakland and Goat Island, at
every ebb. The absence of the teredo from the estuary has never been accounted
for satisfactorily, but the fact of its non-existence is established.

We have written enough to show that Oakland must eventually become the
base of the greater part of the commerce concentrating at the Bay of San Fran-
cisco. The situaticgi of Oakland toward San Francisco, is often compared with
the situation of Brooklyn toward New York, and comparative deductions are made
corresponding with the history of those Eastern cities. Had New York been lo-
cated at the end of a peninsula, jutting from the main-land into the Atlantic Ocean;
and had Brooklyn been located on the main-land opposite, and enjoyed a climate
as much more genial as that of Oakland, compared with the climate of San Fran-
cisco, we opine the result, there, would have been different.

In writing thus about Oakland, it must not be supposed we are predicting the
downfall of San Francisco. On the contrary, we believe that San Francisco will
prosper and increase. We are looking to the time when the commerce concen-
trating at the Bay of San Francisco will be fivefold greater than at present. And
without expecting Oakland to depopulate her great neighbor, we judge, from the
forces which are operating, that our next annual statistics will make a more won-
derful showing than those of the past year.

THE WATER FRONT. w

What is known here as " The Water Front of Oakland," consists of the tide-
lands embraced within the charter line of the city, as shown on the map published
herewith. This does not refer to the marsh-lands — they being above ordinary, or
average, high tide. Some characteristics of this water front are remarkable. The
bed of the San Antonio Estuary, and of its main current to ship-channel, is soft,
and offers a great reward, in commercial value, for engineering skill. The flat,
from the shore of the bay to ship-channel, dips from high -water mark, westerly,
on a regular incline. It is "hard-pan," and presents an admirable foundation for
wharves and other structures.

By the Act incorporating the town of Oakland, passed 1852, the State ceded
the water front to the town. By a subsequent Act, the town became a city, and
the old charter line was confirmed. In 1852, the Trustees of the town conveyed
the entire water front to an individual, for a consideration — such as it ivas. The
city authorities repudiated the action of the Town Trustees, and sought to recover
the water front. A prolonged litigation ensued, the merits of which belong to the
past. However much the development of the city was retarded, some of the re-
sults have been interesting. One, was the preservation of the water front in its
integrity, as a whole ; and when the transcontinental railroad sought its natural
terminus at the Bay of San Francisco, the Genius of Commerce was invoked, and
she extended an open hand. The city sought, and obtained from the Legislature
an "enabling Act," under the provisions of which the litigation was concluded,
and her claims to the water front were exchanged for guarantees of metropolitan

1(5 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

portensions. Master minds were employed ; grand conceptions were developed ;
great things have been accomplished : and greater things are in progress.

The water front, excepting the portion of it owned by the railroad company, and
a small reservation belonging to the city, is the property of an incorporated com-
pany, known as The Oakland Water Front Company, in which the directors of
the railroad company are largely interested. An elaborate survey of the entire
property has been completed, and the contemplated improvements, (an outline of
which we publish), as shown on the Company's map, develops one of the greatest
enterprises of this or any other age. #

THE ESTUARY OF SAN ANTONIO.

An examination of the maps published in this pamphlet will convey a better
general idea of the location of the Estuary, with reference to the Bay, the city of
San Francisco, Oakland, the railroad system of the Pacific Coast, and the com-
merce of the ocean, than we could convey in words.

On the map of Oakland will be found the outlines of the reservations and rights
of way, on the south side of the Estuary, belonging to the Railroad Company ;,
also, the outlines of the improvements projected by the Water Front Company,
which harmonize with those of the former. \

The reader will observe the soundings marked on the map, from four and a
half fathoms water in thQ Bay, to the head of the Estuary; and the scale will
enable him to judge of the area of this most invaluable, land-locked, sheet of
water.

Our article upon the Water Front of Oakland explains the situation of the
Estuary, in the relation of ownership; and the proposed line of crib -work, as
shown on the map — extending from ship-channel, in the Bay, to the head of the
Estuary — is the line established by the engineers employed by the Water Front
Company, and has been copied, by permission, from an elaborate map which the
Company has prepared.

As we have stated, elsewhere, the plans of the Company develop one of the
grandest conceptions of this, or any other age. Recognizing the immutability of
the law of economy, it has comprehended the era of railroad commerce, and its
relationship to the commerce of the ocean. It has formed a partnership with
Nature where Nature furnishes nine-tenths of the capital.

The improvement of a portion of the river Clyde which is now contributary to
one of the greatest centres of industry in the world, cost several millions of
dollars; but the Estuary of San Antonio, with a capacity for thirteen miles of
land-locked wharfing, and a basin to float a fleet of the largest vessels ; which is
in close alliance with the terminus of a continental railroad system ; and on the
banks of which, locomotives from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston ; from
Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis; from New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston;
can stand in waiting to whistle greeting to steamers from Panama, Sydney, and
Honolulu; from Astoria, Yokohama, and Japan — this Estuary can be made
immensely contributary to the commerce of the world, at an expense of a few
hundreds of thousands of dollars.

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 17

CLIMATE.

Information respecting climate being already widely disseminated, the reader
will be more interested in general comparative remarks than in meteorological
details.

Often, the thermometer is a poor index to the comfortable temperature in Cali-
fornia. A degree of heat or cold that is not distressing in one locality, is almost
insupportable in another. In the dry atmosphere of the mountains, ice forms in
the shade, when nobody feels uncomfortably cold ; and in the humid atmosphere
of the sea-coast, ice melts in a blanket, when every body is chilled to the bone.
When the mercury indicates a temperature of 80 degrees, people swelter in a
humid atmosphere, and" refrigerate in a dry one. Therefore, taking it for granted
that information about bodily comfort will be more interesting than minutes con-
cerning the range of the mercury, we shall devote more attention to the former
than to the latter.

Taking the climate of San Francisco as a basis for comparison, the mean
annual temperature for seventeen years, as determined by Dr. H. Gibbons, Sr., of
that city, was 560 4' — the mean temperature of spring having been 560 5'; summer,
60°; autumn, 590; and winter, 500. There were but six days when the mercury
reached as high as 90° and but one day when it fell as low as 250. During the
wet season, the climate of the country surrounding the Bay varies little from that
of San Francisco ; but during the dry season the variations are remarkable.

The rarefaction of the air, produced by the action of the sun's rays upon the
vast surface of the interior country, is the cause of our prevailing summer coast-
winds. The air is drawn from the ocean to re-establish the equilibrium (inland)
which is destroyed by the heat. The force of the wind depends on the degree of
rarefaction that has been produced, and its direction is influenced by intervening
obstacles presented by the topographical features of the country.

At some places, the wind and fogs from the ocean sweep over the surface ;
some places are protected from the force of the wind and the humidity of fogs by
the configuration of the mountains, but are often deprived of the sun's rays by the
fogs passing overhead ; others are protected entirely from the wind, and enjoy an
unclouded atmosphere which permits the accumulation of heat; and, again, the
gravitating tendency of a cold current from the ocean often causes it to sweep
down the lee slope of the hills, or to dip to the surface of the plain, between two
ranges. Hence, the difference in the sensation of heat and cold experienced at
places only a few miles apart. The necessity of substituting cloth wrappings for
lawns or linen, within a transit of thirty minutes by boat or rail, seems wonderful,
even when we know the cause.

The summer climate of Oakland and vicinity, is a matter of curiosity to many.
Immediately back of Oakland, the mountains are high, but there are depressions
in the range, both north and south of us, at a distance of several miles. The
strongest wind-currents are, of course, drawn through these depressions. We see
the fog banks which enter the Golden Gate take a northerly direction, and the fog
banks which come through the "Mission Pass," in the southerly part of San
Francisco, take a southerly direction, across the Bay. The high hills between the
central part of San Francisco and the ocean often protect that portion of the city
from a low fog bank; but, even when the fog bank is high, and envelops San
Francisco in its humid embrace. Oakland almost invariably escapes it. When the

z8 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

fog bank is so dense and heavy that the depressions in the mountain range, north
and south of us, do not accommodate it, and the fog from either direction meets
overhead, it is generally absorbed, before reaching the earth, by the accumulation
of dry, heated air; or lifted from the surface, before reaching Oakland, by the
upward tendency of the draught which must pass over the high mountains behind
us. Thus, the most important difference between the climate of San Francisco
and Oakland, is attributable to the configuration of the neighboring mountains.
The movement of the fog indicates the force and direction of the wind, and every
boy who has ever sat on the windward side of a board fence, and enjoyed being
out of the wind, will understand the foregoing explanation.

The difference in temperature between Oakland and San Francisco, as
indicated by the thermometer, is not so great as many persons suppose ; but the
difference in the velocity of the wind and in the humidity of the atmosphere, is the
chief cause of the contrast in comfort and health between the two places.

During the prevailing summer winds, our climate is a mean between that of
San Francisco and San Jose". Winds from the north or north-west, which come
in a direction nearly parallel with the Coast Range, are more violent at Oakland
than at San Francisco ; but they are of rare occurrence.

The soil of Oakland is a sandy loam, varying from three to four feet deep.
Beyond Oakland, toward the foot-hills, it partakes more of the pure loam, or
adobe. In the northern part of the city (the part toward the foot-hills) it is less
sandy than in other places. The apple, pear, plum, cherry, and apricot, are pro-
duced in great perfection wheresoever planted. The almond also thrives, and
bears plentifully. All kinds of garden vegetables, except the egg-plant and okra,
can be produced at will, and in great abundance. Raspberries, strawberries, and
currants, thrive and bear marvelously. Shade and ornamental trees make rapid
growth, as the gardens on every side attest. So much has been written about our
productions that we were inclined to omit the subject. Indeed, the cultivation of
fruits and vegetables has almost ceased in Oakland. Ornamental trees, shrubs,
and flowers, are preferred. The nursery gardens in the vicinity afford an evidence
of the public taste for the beautiful in Nature. For example, in the "Belle View
Nursery" are found forty-two varieties of the acacia, thirty-three of eucalyptus,
ten known varieties of California oak, and more than one hundred varieties of
coniferas, to say nothing of thousands of shrubs and tens of thousands of flowers.

As a rule, we can gather beautiful bouquets from plants in the open air every
month in the year. In sheltered situations, the fuchsia, oleander, geranium, and
even the heliotrope, withstand our severest winters.

THE NATURAL SUPPLY OF WATER,

In every part of Oakland water can be obtained from wells ranging in depth
from 14 feet to 35 feet. Taking the neighborhood of Eighth and Center streets
as the mean, we find two wells, eight feet eight inches in diameter, and twenty-five

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. iq

feet deep, which yield, when the water is lowest, all that can be pumped by a
single-horse-power, working ten hours per day. The proprietor of one, informs
us that, at times, his well has been taxed at the rate of 10,000 gallons per day.
Each of these wells has preserved the verdure of extensive lawns during the
past summer, (the driest we have experienced), and the water in both is soft and
pure. A corresponding supply of water is obtainable in every part of Oakland,
from wells of the same diameter ; but the requisite depth of wells depends on the
profile of the ground, and varies as before mentioned.

The force of the wind, although not so uniform, nor so great, in this neighbor-
hood as at San Francisco, is amply sufficient to supply the requirements for both
household and garden purposes, if the diameter of the wells and the size of the
water-tanks are made to provide against the contingency of an occasional period of
calm. Experience has demonstrated that a well of ten feet diameter, with a good
wind-mill and pump, and a tank of 12,000 gallons capacity, will, with judicious man-
agement, afford water enough for an acre of lawn, besides what is needed for do-
mestic purposes. As a consequence, wind+mills are quite a feature of Oakland.

The quality of ordinary well-water is not uniform. Some of it is hard, but, with
rare exceptions, it is all pleasant to drink. Judging from the uniformity of the sub-
stratum of indurated sand and clay which underlies the site of Oakland, we are in-
clined to believe that soft water can be obtained in all parts of the city, if wells are
sunk to the proper depth, and the curbing cemented so as to keep out surface
water.

The stratum of indurated sand and clay, above mentioned, is impenetrable to
surface water, and makes an admirable filter for water percolating through it.
Hence, if the curbing of wells be cemented to a proper depth, and packed with
clay on the outside, on a level with the "hard pan," even the proximity of cess-pools
cannot impair the purity of wells.

All efforts, in Oakland, to obtain overflowing artesian wells, have failed, but
they have resulted in the next best thing, to wit : inexhaustible wells of soft, pure
water which comes within a few feet of the surface. We know of four such wells
in as many different parts of the city.

The result of experimentation in artesian well-boring indicates the existence of
a stratum of pebbles and red gravel, at a depth of less than one hundred feet,
through which water percolates freely, under a sufficient pressure to bring it near
the surface ; and it is money thrown away to sink an artesian well below the stra-
tum of gravel. The water obtained from the latter source is soft and pure.

THE CONTRA COSTA WATER COMPANY

Furnishes the following statement respecting the water now being supplied from
the mountain range back of Oakland :

"The water is collected at a point five miles from the city, near the head of
Temescal Creek, where two streams flow constantly into a reservoir. The water-
shed supplying the streams, above the reservoir, embraces an area of three thou-
sand acres, too precipitous for cultivation. It is estimated that a rain-fall of twelve
inches upon this water-shed will furnish more than one thousand millions of gal-
lons. The reservoir capacity is now small, but is being increased to about two
hundred millions of gallons, and can be further increased as occasion requires."

The energy exhibited by the Company is highly commendable. It has already
laid about thirty miles of pipe, ranging in size from three to fourteen inches. The

20 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

estimate of the water supply obtainable from this source, is three millions of gal-
lons per day.

The drought of the present year (1871) has demonstrated the uncertainty of the
Company's calculations ; and it has been obliged to resort to artesian wells, and
steam power, to furnish its patrons with water. The charges, for domestic pur-
poses, are the same as at San Francisco.

WATER RESOURCES.

In Amador Valley, thirty miles from Oakland, there is an abundance of soft,
pure water, sufficient to supply a population exceeding half a million. The water-
basin is the receptacle of six hundred square miles of adjacent country, with its
tributary streams.

The water exists in a Tule Lake, partly subterranean, five hundred feet above
tide level, surrounded by hundreds of natural wells, which are full to the brim in
the driest seasons. During ordinary wet seasons, these wells overflow and inun-
date a large surface. The sources that supply the lake are constant — the most
important of which are the Los Positas, in the Livermore plain; the Arroyo
Mocho, and the Arroyo del Valle, on the east and south; the Arroyo el Alamo,
Arroyo de la Tasajera, the Los Alamos, and San Cayetao from the north. Most of
these are living streams flowing into the lake. There is but one outlet to this water
— at the south-west end of the lake — debouching from which, the water forms the
Laguna Creek that flows southerly, parallel with the Central Pacific Railroad, six
miles to Sunol Valley. There, it forms a junction with the Alameda Creek. The
water from the two sources forms a large and beautiful stream which meanders,
side by side with the railroad, through the Alameda Canon to Vallejo's Mill.
(See map.) Thence, it flows south-westerly, by the town of Alvarado, to the Bay
of San Francisco.

By diverting the water at the junction of the streams, and conveying it along
the mountain -sides, through the canon, five miles to Vallejo's Mill; thence, west-
erly, along the foot-hills to Hayward's ; the San Lorenzo Creek, a large and rapid
stream, could be made tributary. Four miles nearer Oakland, is the San Leandro
Creek, likewise available as a tributary, and which, alone, would furnish a supply
of water for a population of fifty thousand.

The water from these sources would not only afford Oakland an ample supply,
for many generations, but the places on and near the line of approach, including
Niles' Station, Decoto, Alvarado, Hayward's, San Leandro, Alameda, and Brook-
lyn, could reap a similar benefit.

The foot-hills present the convenience for conveying the water from the above-
mentioned sources to a grand reservoir back of Oakland, one hundred feet above
the level of the highest part of the city.

North-west of the city, there are also sources whence supplies are obtainable,
the most important of which are the San Pablo Creek, fifteen miles distant, and
the Wildcat Creek, near the State University grounds. The water from both could
be brought to the grand reservoir.

We are not prepared with estimates of the cost of obtaining this great water
supply; but from information given us by skillful engineers who have examined
the ground, we can safely say that it would be trifling, in comoarison with its im-
portance.

The subject is already attracting the attention of enterprising men, and is
worthy that of our city authorities.

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 21

STREETS.

The aggregate length of all the streets in Oakland, is, in round numbers, one
hundred and five miles, of which fourteen miles have been macadamized and other-
wise improved. The streets are generally eighty feet wide, and in most cases cross
each other at right angles. Broadway, the principal thoroughfare, is one hundred
and ten feet in width, the sidewalks being twenty feet wide. The streets are mac-
adamized with a hard, blue trap rock, of a very superior quality, which is found in
great abundance in the immediate vicinity of the city.

The following are streets, and portions of streets, that were graded, macadam-
ized, and curbed, during 1870:

Oak Street, from Seventh to Twelfth 1,320 feet.

Julia Street, from Eighth to Ninth 200

Alice Street, from Eighth to Fourteenth 1,520

Washington Street, from Eighth to Fourteenth 1,550

Clay Street, from Eighth to Tenth 480

Brush Street, from First to Twelfth 2,760

Market Street, from Seventh to Forty-second 4,420

Sixth Street, from Castro to Franklin 2,040

Seventh Street, from Broadway to Franklin 300

Ninth Street, from Clay to Oak 3,020

Tenth Street, from Broadway to Alice 1,360

Fourteenth Street, from Broadway to Washington 300

Total 19,240 feet.

The average cost of macadamizing is estimated at 6}{ cents per square foot.

Nineteen thousand two hundred and forty lineal feet of roadway and crossings,

converted into square feet, gives :

926,840 feet, at 6% cents $57,927 50

35, 199 feet curbing, at 12^ cents 4,233 88

Engineering, advertising, and culverts 3, 000 00

Total cost $65,161 38

GRADES.

The city of Oakland is situated on a peninsula extending about one and one-
half miles from north to south, and two and one-half miles from east to west. It
is bounded on the south and east by San Antonio Creek, on the west by the Bay
of San Francisco, and on the north by the charter line, established by Act of the
Legislature, in May, 1852. The highest ground in the city is found about midway
between the northerly and southerly boundaries, and is thirty-eight feet above the
level of high tide. From this water-shed the ground slopes with remarkable uni-
formity, southerly and easterly, to the estuary, and northerly, to a depression near
the charter line, and to the salt marsh along the shore of the bay. Sufficient fall
is everywhere obtained for surface drainage, and no serious difficulty is encounter-
ed in establishing surface grades.

Something over a year ago, the Common Council appointed a Board of Engi-
neers, "to examine the plans and profiles of the city of Oakland, to suggest changes,

22 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

if any they may deem necessary, and to report a plan of street grades, lines, and a
system of sewerage for the whole city." The Board was composed of George F.
Allardt, Chief Engineer of State Tide Lands; Prof. George Davidson, Assistant
U. S. Coast Survey; George E. Gray, Consulting Engineer Central Pacific Rail-
road Company; Milo Hoadley, President of the late Board of Engineers of San
Francisco, and William F. Boardman, late City Engineer of Oakland.

It has seldom been the fortune of any city to obtain the combined services of
the same number of engineers so eminent in their profession and so well qualified
in every respect to deal with the important problems submitted to this Board.

In due time they presented an elaborate report, and all street improvements
and other public works are now executed in accordance with their recommenda-
tions. On the uplands, the grades adopted by the Board conform to the natural
surface of the ground, so far as is consistent with an efficient system of drainage
and sewage. On the salt marshes and tide lands along the water-front, while
due regard is given to the future commercial requirements of the city, the grade is
not placed so high as to be onerous or oppressive to the property-owners.

SEWERS.

It is proposed to construct two main sewers of sufficient capacity to receive the
surface and sewer drainage of the entire peninsula. One, along or near San
Antonio Estuary, and the other through the depression near the charter line on
the north. The aggregate length of the two sewers will be about five miles. The
tidal waters retained in Lake Peralta, at the eastern terminus of San Antonio
Creek, will be used for the purpose of flushing the main sewers at stated intervals.
The bottom of the upper end, or inlet, of either sewer will be placed one foot below
high tide ; the bottom of the outlet at the Bay, one foot bejow low tide — giving a
fall of six and a half feet, which is sufficient to keep the sewers free from all deposits.

Surface water, and house sewage, will be conveyed to the main sewer by means
of smaller lateral sewers of cement pipes, twelve inches in diameter. Gradients
of one in one hundred and fifty can be obtained in the most unfavorable localities.
The projected system of sewage is admirable, and its cost will be unusually small.

STONE QUARRIES.

There are inexhaustible supplies of basaltic trap rock found in the foothills,
within a distance of from two to three miles north-easterly from Oakland. There
are now two macadamizing companies engaged in paving the streets of Oakland
and Brooklyn, with rock obtained from the above-mentioned source, and they
employ about one hundred men. Both companies have machines for crushing the
material and graduating its size. The crushing capacity of each is from seven to
ten tons per hour. The character of our paving far excels the old fashioned mac-
adamizing, and the quality of the material, for paving purposes, is not surpassed
elsewhere in the world. The cost of paving is mentioned on another page.

Ledges of excellent sandstone are also found in the hills, at a short distance
beyond where the material for macadamizing is obtained, and the stone is being
used for building purposes.

OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

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OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

SANITARY AND MORTUARY.

From a sanitary point of view, Oakland stands unrivaled among the cities of
the Pacific slope. This is a bold assertion ; nevertheless, it is confirmed by official
records.

We shall not enumerate the causes which render Oakland so eminently desirable
as a place^forfamily residences, but we shall proceed to prove that not another of
the principal cities in the State can claim such exemption from sickness and death.

We quote the recent census reports respecting the population of the several
cities ; and the mortuary statistics are summarized from the reports of Dr. Logan,
President of the State Board of Health, published in the San Francisco Medical
Journal.

NUMBER OF DEATHS DURING THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1 87 1.

1870.

1871.

*T5

CITIES.

B
crq

CD
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<-<

<— 1
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3
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San Francisco

298
31

7
23
t6

281
31

264
29

16
21

309
50
13
17
16

347
46

9
16
10

266

33
12
18

24|

298
28
12
22
*9

245
24
13

9
18

227

232
24

226

39
10
12
*9

221
26

I4|

3.214
392
117

180
179

i5°>36i

16,298

11,104

10,033

9,091

Sacramento

Oakland

Stockton

San Jose

* The deaths at San Jos£ during April and May, 1871, do not appear in Dr. Logan's Reports ; and to avoid
injustice, as between Oakland and San Jos6, we have inserted figures corresponding with the minimum
reports of other months.

Discarding the decimals, the above exhibit shows, during the twelve months,
one death in San Francisco to about every 46 inhabitants ; in Sacramento, one to
42; in Oakland, one to 95 ; in Stockton, one to 56; and in San ]os6, one to 51.

It is but fair to deduct from the deaths set down to San Francisco, the number
which resulted from suicides and casualties ; and it should be borne in mind that
many persons afflicted with disease contracted elsewhere, visit San Francisco for
medical treatment ; and the proportion of these who die, should also be deducted
from her mortuary reports, when we are comparing sanitary conditions. Deducting
143 deaths from her 12 months' report to cover the former, and 12 per cent, from
the remaining 2,702, to compensate the latter, the result will show nearly double
the number of deaths in San Francisco, in proportion to the population, as have
occurred in Oakland.

The comparison between Oakland and the other cities, is no less wonderful;
and, considering that Oakland is a favorite resort for persons suffering from disease,
the above exhibit will astonish the people of Oakland little less than persons abroad.

DURATION OF SICKNESS.

Before concluding, we will refer to a collateral fact, alike unprecedented in
sanitary annals, yet, supported by incontestable evidence. For the purpose of get-
ting information concerning the average duration of sickness in Oakland and
vicinity, we have examined, by permission, the books of two of our most prominent
physicians. We took the aggregate of the visits made by the two physicians for
six months, and divided the sum by the total number of patients visited. The

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 25

result was an average oifour and one-third visits to each case. By leaving out
of the calculation several desperate cases, the average would be considerably less.
The books of the aforesaid physicians will be cheerfully submitted to the inspec-
tion of any respectable practitioner who may think we have committed an error.

Is there another city in the United States whose population enjoy such exemp-
tion from sickness and death? If there be one, sign -boards should be erected
on every highway and lane approaching it, warning physicians and undertakers of
the danger from starvation attending a residence within.

At the request of the Publication Committee, we have investigated the data of the foregoing article,
and found it to be correct. Clinton Cushing, M.D., Prest. Alameda Co. Medical Association.

John C. Van Wyck, M.D., Librarian.
Oakland, Oct. 1, 1871.

DRIVES AND SCENERY.

There are few places upon earth which are more inviting to those fond of out-
door exercise, than Oakland and its vicinity. If it be true — as it unquestionably
is — that the Bay .of San Francisco is the finest and most picturesque in the world,
not even excepting the Bay of Naples, and the magnificent harbor of Rio Janeiro,
it is no less true that the site of Oakland affords the most beautiful view of that
Bay, and the most delightful of the valleys by which it is environed. Here, the
Coast Range,, generally so abrupt and rocky, recedes gradually into a vale miles in
width, and slopes with a gentle declivity to the waters of the Bay that bathe its
borders with the health -inspiring ripples of the Ocean, just visible through the
opening of the Golden Gate. Eastward, the summit of Mount Diablo presents
one of the loftiest peaks from San Diego to Shasta Butte. Westward, gleams the
broad bosom of the Bay, bordered in the distance by the triple hills of San Fran-
cisco, the blue summits of the San Bruno Range, and the slumbering valleys of
San Mateo. Northward, stretch the fruitful orchards of San Pablo, the green hills
of Carquinez, and the fairy islets of Golden Rock and The Sisters ; while south-
ward, the old Mission of San Jose* looms up in the distance like a glimpse of Eden;
and the most fertile of hills, and dales, and plains, commingle in the view, assuring
the spectator that no land on the globe unites in itself blessings more varied, or
landscapes more enchanting, than those which greet the eye from the flower-enam-
eled plain of Alameda.

Here, are no toll -roads, to check adventure and tax the pleasure -seeker with
their oppressive exactions. There are no craggy precipices to climb, or soft mo-
rasses to cross; but the country is intersected with highways attesting the genius
of MacAdam, and leveled like the thoroughfares of Holland. Are you weary of
city life, and require the mountain air to invigorate your frame ? Scale the summit
of Mount Diablo ! Are you ill, and need the waters of old Ponce de Leon to re-
animate you with the vigor of perpetual youth ? Go and bathe in the fountains of
the old Mission San Jose* ! Are you fond of sport ? Shoulder your gun and gath-
er quail from the foothills, or rig your fishing-tackle and bait for smelt or silver-fins,
for trout or perch, off the ends of our piers, or in the shady nooks of the San Le-
andro ! Are you a lover of Nature ? Mount your horse, and thread the grounds
of the State University ! Visit the gems of the foot-hill farms ! Climb the gentle
acclivities of the Coast Range ! And, turning suddenly in the saddle, cast your

26 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

eyes on the slumbering landscape at your feet ! Where upon the broad earth can
your gaze meet with so enchanting a spectacle? Vineyard, orchard, and garden;
fountain, bay, and ocean ; plain, meadow, and mountain, blend in a unison so per-
fect, that you feel there can be no spot where Nature presents greater inducements
for homes, than the gorgeous queen of the valleys, the beautiful bride of the Bay,
the flourishing city of Oakland.

WHAT NATURE HAS DONE.

She has given us a climate unsurpassed in the world — preserving the health of
those who are not afflicted, and imparting health to those who are.

She has given us a soil, in harmony with the climate, which affords sustenance
to nearly every description of plants and trees.

She has given us a site for a city which, comparatively speaking, is already
graded ; she has ornamented it with a profusion of majestic oaks, and sent larks
and linnets to perch upon the boughs and delight us with their warbling.

She has given us a never - failing supply of pure water within a few feet of the
surface, and she guards it from contamination by a formation of sand and clay,
impervious to surface water.

She has placed, within a convenient distance, inexhaustible supplies of pure
water which may be conducted, by gravitation alone, to the tops of our highest
buildings.

She has placed, close at hand, ledges of stone admirably adapted to building
and macadamizing.

She has surrounded us with, scenery which delights the-eye, expands the mind,
and animates the spirits.

She has given us, in common with San Francisco, one of the finest harbors in
the world ; and she has banished the teredo from our shores.

She has given us a solid foundation for buildings and wharves, from high-water
mark to ship-channel; and she deposits her mud elsewhere.

She has made depressions in the mountain ranges which lead the locomotive
to our wharves to meet the commerce of the ocean ; and has ordained Oakland as
the great terminus of the railroad system of the Pacific Coast.

STREET RAILROADS.

The contour of Oakland and the surrounding country, being almost level, or
gently undulating, is peculiarly well adapted to horse-railroad enterprises. There
is one already in successful operation, extending from the foot of Broadway to
Telegraph Avenue, and thence to Temescal Bridge. Its franchise extends to the
State University grounds. Its present track is three miles in length, and the cars
and horses used by the road company compare favorably with those used in San
Francisco. The success of the enterprise has stimulated the projection of other
horse -railroads, among the most important of which is one designed to connect
Fruit Vale and Brooklyn with the University grounds, and one to connect the San
Francisco and Oakland Road with the University grounds, via Peralta street. The

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 27

latter will be built and owned by the C. P. R. R. Company. The Oakland and
San Pablo Avenue Company, and the San Pablo, Webster Street, and Alameda
Company, have also located routes of great importance ; and the roads already
projected will form, when completed, a cordon of iron rails which will afford the
people of Oakland, and the neighboring towns, cheap and constant facilities of
communication with each other, and with the State University.

OAKLAND GAS-LIGHT COMPANY.

This Company has fourteen miles of "mains" already laid in Oakland, besides
extensions to and about the town of Brooklyn. The present capacity of the works
is one hundred thousand feet per day, and the quality of the gas is not surpassed
by that of any other company in California. There are few, if any, cities in the
United States of an equal number of inhabitants, wherein such an extent of gas-
mains has been laid. The quantity of gas consumed is not commensurate with
the extent of the mains ; but that militates against the Company, and in favor of
property-owners, and of those who desire to build houses and to enjoy the luxury
of gas-light.

A Pneumatic Gas Company has obtained a franchise for laying pipe in Oak-
land ; but whether or not its pipe will be lighted, remains to be seen.

LAND TITLES.

The stability of the title to real estate in Oakland and Brooklyn townships, rec-
ommends it strongly for investment and homestead purposes. It is a fundamental
principle in English and Spanish law, derived from the maxims of the feudal tenures,
that the King was the original proprietor of all land in the Kingdom, and of all
territories acquired (like California) by discovery and colonization, and that he was
the only and true source of title. In the United States, the same principle has
been adopted. All valid individual titles to land in California are, therefore, de-
rived from the Government of the United States, and the State of California
— from the latter subordinately, and only for land covered by tide-water ; or, from
the Spanish Crown, prior to the 28th of September, 1821 — the day recognized in
law as the date of the independence of the Mexican nation ; or, from the Govern-
ment of Mexico up to the 7th of July, 1846, when the United States took posses-
sion of this State which was subsequently ceded to them by the Treaty of Guada-
lupe Hidalgo, February 2d, 1848 — by which treaty all governmental grants, pre-
viously made, were confirmed.

Thus, was the title to the lands in the city of Oakland, and the town of Brook-
lyn, together with that of the surrounding country, comprising about twenty -five
thousand acres, derived from the Mexican Government, through a grant made in
1820 to Don Luis Peralta, in recognition of his meritorious services in the con-
quest of California.

Peralta divided his rancho, first, by actual partition in 1846, and afterward (in
185 1 ) by will, between his four sons, Jose' Domingo, Vicente, Antonio, and Ignacio,

28 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

whose titles have since been recognized and confirmed by the United States Courts.
Efforts were made to assail and cloud fractional parts of the title of these brothers,
but the Courts have rejected, and declared invalid, all adverse claims.

No real estate can be held under a better title than that which is derived from
the brothers Peralta.

THE PRICE OF HOMESTEAD SITES.

In all places where people most do congregate, the active competition for the
possession of land, causes the value of real estate to rise with the increase of in-
habitants. Thus, has property in San Francisco become very valuable, mostly in
the eastern portion of the city, specially devoted to business in its various branch-
es ; thence, southerly, over flat lands ; and westerly, over hills and through dales,
in all inhabitable directions, where year by year dwellings multiply.

But this increase in value is not confined to the limits of the metropolis. It
spreads for miles over neighboring localities which are attractive for family resi-
dences, as they are brought nearer by means of increasing facilities for travel.

It is so with the surroundings of New York, and all large cities ; and the his-
tory of the last few years plainly indicates that the same causes are producing like
results here. The attention of those whose interests or preferences have called
them to San Francisco, has, of late years, been more and more directed, for cli-
matic and other reasons, toward suburban retreats, chiefly in the dii^ction of Oak-
land and vicinity. Values have consequently increased, but, apparently, not in pro-
portion to the progress in population and improvements, nor to the prospective
importance of the locality.

The object of this article is to invite attention to the very considerable differ-
ence which still exi§ts in the value of residence property in San Francisco, as com-
pared with that in Oakland and Brooklyn. Various considerations may lead peo-
ple to prefer a residence outside of the great city to one within, and not the least
among these is the larger quantity of ground obtainable for the same amount of
money.

For this purpose it will be useful to compare the value of residence property in
the places named, for lots of different depths, on streets of different widths — items
which enter largely into calculations of value.

It is evident that no very precise comparison of one locality with another can
be made, as no two localities can be said to offer exactly the same advantages ;
nor, owing to the diversity of individual appreciation, are they susceptible of being
judged by the same standard.

The information, herewith submitted, has been obtained from reliable sources.
Opinions on values will always differ, more or less, but the valuations have been
carefully made, though necessarily in a general way, and are intended to represent
prices which can be realized when opportunities for sales occur. All quotations
are stated per foot frontage for inside lots — corner lots being worth from ten to
thirty per cent. more. f

In San Francisco, on streets $2% feet wide, like Mission, Howard, and Folsom
Streets, property ranges, for lots 80 to 90 feet deep, from Fourth to Seventh, at
$125 to $200 per foot frontage; and lots beyond Seventh, to Fourteenth, at $75 to
$100; farther southerly, to Twentieth Street, $60 to $75, and on Valencia, $80 to

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 29

$90; on Van Ness Avenue, $120 to $150; on the other streets, in the Hayes and
Beideman tracts, about 69 feet wide, lots 120 feet deep are worth $60 to $100 per
front foot.

In Oakland, east from Market Street, lots 100 feet deep on all the 80 feet streets
north of Railroad Avenue or Seventh Street, sell for $27.50 to $50 per foot front- '
age ; and south of Seventh Street, at $22.50 to $30. On Adeline and Market
Streets, both 80 feet wide, lots 125 and 130 feet deep, between Seventh and Twen-
ty-second Streets, bring $27.50 to $45 per front foot.

Again, in San Francisco, on Stevenson, Jessie, Minna, Natoma, and similar
streets, only 35 feet wide, lots 70 to 80 feet deep, between Fourth and Seventh
Streets, bring readily $50 to $60 per foot frontage, and from Seventh to Tenth,
about $40.

Oakland and Brooklyn have no streets o'f such limited width — the narrowest
measuring 60 feet. On the 60 feet streets in Oakland, property sells as follows :
North of Seventh, to Fourteenth, between Market and Adeline, $30 per foot front-
age, 125 feet deep; from Fourteenth to Eighteenth, between Market and Adeline,
125 feet deep, $16 to $22.50; between Kirkham and Peralta, north of Four-
teenth Street, 104 feet deep, $12 to $20; between Peralta, Pine, Eighth, and
Twelfth Streets, near the Point, lots 135 feet deep, $22.50 to $25; between Ade-
line and Peralta, Seventh and Fourteenth, lots 125 feet deep, $20 to $22.50; at
the Point, both north and south of Seventh Street, lots 100 feet deep, $22.50 to
$30; north of Twenty- second Street and west of the San Pablo Road, lots
125 feet deep, $10; east of the said road, lots no feet deep, $15 to $20 per foot
frontage.

In Brooklyn, property on 60 feet streets is worth: West of Walker, and south
of Humbert Streets, lots 150 feet deep, $10 to $15 per foot frontage ; north of Hep-
burn Street, lots 140 to 150 feet deep, $5 to $10.

The reader will bear in mind that reference has been made solely to residence
property, and our allusions to San Francisco values do not refer to certain favored
localities where even residence property is held as high as $300 per front foot.
Respecting business property, those who desire to purchase, may seek information
for themselves. It is hardly necessary to say that business property. is far more
valuable in San Francisco than in Oakland.

BUILDING IMPROVEMENTS IN OAKLAND.

On January 2d, the Oakland Daily Transcript published a table showing the
location and value of the buildings erected in this city during the year 1870, from
which it appears that 615 houses were built, at a total cost of $1,405,150. Since
the first of January, 1871, a very large number of buildings have been commenced,
and the improvements for 1871 are very likely to exceed in value those made in
1870, by at least half a million dollars.

COST OF BUILDING.

The cost of building in Oakland is somewhat less than in San Francisco. The
lumber-yards, and the planing-mills, are conveniently located, and the ground
which they occupy is much less valuable than that occupied by similar establish-

30 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

ments in San Francisco. Bricks and stone are obtainable cheaper here than at
San Francisco; castings are supplied by the local foundry; and, generally speak-
ing, no grading or filling is required.

MANUFACTURING PROSPECTS.

The map of Oakland shows the outlines of the contemplated improvements of
the Water Front Company. The most important features of the project are the
dredging of the Bar at the mouth of the San Antonio Estuary, the cribbing of both
banks, from ship -channel to the head of the southerly arm, a distance of over five
miles, and the widening and deepening of the channel where necessary.

There will be a continuous wharf between the water and the first tier of blocks
on the north bank of the channel, from its mouth to Broadway Street. A wide
street is provided for, in the rear of the tier of blocks, to accommodate as many
rail tracks as may be needed. These tracks will lead to the main trunk of the C.
P. R. R. Thus, a manufacturing establishment situated upon any of the aforesaid
blocks will be able to receive or deliver freight at "ship's tackles," at the front
doors, and to load or unload cars at the back doors. If desirable, "turn-outs" can
be laid from the street, passing through the building to the water ; and it requires
no gift of prophecy to predict that, as the projected improvements are made, the
heavy manufacturing business of the Bay counties will concentrate where such fa-
cilities for economizing are provided : and there is not another place about the Bay
where it is possible to provide them. The perusal of our remarks under the head
of "The Estuary of San Antonio," will give the reader additional light concerning
the vast prospective importance of the manufacturing interests of Oakland.

: BR5DGBNG THE BAY.

Some of our San Francisco neighbors seem much alarmed about commercial
prospects at Oakland, and are indulging extraordinary vagaries respecting things
which they deem necessary to save their city from decay.

The fact is, San Francisco is more interested than Oakland, in commerce at
Oakland. That is to say, 150,000 people are more interested than 11,000 people,
in reducing the cost of handling exports and imports. For example, unless we
can compete with other countries, in shipping grain to distant markets, the culti-
vation of grain in California, except for home consumption, will cease, and every
branch of industry and trade in San Francisco would suffer. On the contrary, if,
by means of machinery, and the economical handling of the grain crops, farmers
have the assurance of realizing a profit, they will seed more land, and every branch
of industry and trade in San Francisco will be stimulated by the success of the
farmers.

This proposition is as simple as "rolling off a log;" yet, a portion of the press
and of the people of San Francisco are exercised at the economical arrangements
at Oakland, for handling our export products; and are proposing to tax the com-
munity for the purpose of supplying other, and far less economical, arrangements

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 31

elsewhere. They are even advocating the vandalism of destroying half the value
of a great harbor which belongs to the Commerce of the World, in the vain hope
of forcing business into an unnatural channel.

They are horrified at the laying of a "gas-main" across Mission Creek, where
hogs wallow at low tide ; but are in ecstasies #at the thought of cutting off more
than ninety-two square miles of the navigable waters of the Bay of San Francisco,
from free commerce with the ocean, by constructing a bridge from Alameda, or
Oakland, to San Francisco.

Nor is this all : The conductors of the San Francisco press are well aware
that solemn warnings have been uttered by the highest hydrographical authorities
in the United States, against obstructing the currents of the Bay, in any way that
might decrease, to a great extent, its tidal area ; for, upon the tidal area, depends
the volume and scouring effect of the tidal flow over the Bar, at the entrance of
the harbor, and the depth of water upon it.

In view of this warning, and considering that it is impossible for engineering
skill to predetermine the effect of placing fifty, or more, immense piers, in a line
across the channel of the Bay, it seems extraordinary, to say the least, that re-
spectable journals in San Francisco should advocate such a project.

San Francisco cannot afford the experiment. New York and Boston cannot
afford it. The merchant marine of California, and the farmers of California, pro-
test against it.

We shall now proceed to enlighten the reader respecting the pecuniary benefits,
and the commercial advantages, which San Francisco might reasonably expect from
the construction of a bridge ; and we challenge any engineer to discover a material
error in the following estimates, by Geo. F. Allardt, C. E., who furnished them by
request. Mr. Allardt is recognized by Engineers as one of the foremost men in
the Profession :

Estimated Cost of Bridging the Bay from San Francisco to the Alameda Shore — Distance,
five miles (26,400 feet), of which three miles f 1 5, 840 feet) will extend across ship-
channel; (from 18 to 60 feet in depth at low-tide) ; and two ?niles fi 0,560 feet) across
shoal water on the Alameda shore.

First, a wooden bridge throughout : two miles of pile trestling in shoal water, and three
miles of Howe truss in deep water, supported on pile-piers, with spans of 200 feet each,
including three turn-table spans, or "draws." Bottom of trusses to be ten feet above high-
water, in the clear.

10,560 lineal feet of pile-trestling, @ $20 §211,200

79 pile-piers in deep water, @ $4,000 316,000

15,840 lineal feet of Howe truss, @ $60 950,400

Extra expense on three turn-table spans •25,000

§1,502,600
Add 10 per cent, for superintendence and contingencies 150,260

Total cost §1,652,860

Or §62.63 per lineal foot.

Second, the same, except with stone-piers, across the deep water, in place oi pile -piers.

OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

10,560 lineal feet of pile-trestling, @ $20* t $21 1,200

15,840 lineal feet of Howe truss, @ $60 950,400

80,400 cubic yards of masonry in 79 piers, @ $40 3,216,000

Extra expense on turn-table spans and piers 50,000

$4,427,600
Add 10 per cent, for superintendence and contingencies. $442,760

Total cost ..;..._.. -.....„... $4,870,360

Or$i84. 48 per lineal foot. -

Third, pile-trestling for two miles, as before ; stone-piers for three miles, across deep
water, and iron trusses, in place of the Howe truss. Spans 200 feet.

10,560 lineal feet of pile-trestling, @ $20 .' $21 1,200

15,840 lineal feet of iron truss, @. $200 3, 168,000

80,400 cubic yards of masonry in 79 piers, @ $40, 3,216,000

Extra expense on turn-table spans and piers 50,000

$6,645,200
Add 10 per cent, for superintendence and contingencies 664,520

Total cost . ,.„ . .» $7,309,720

Or $276 . 88 per lineal foot.

Fourth, a first-class high bridge, with stone-piers and iron superstructure throughout,
placed 100 feet, in the clear, above high-tide in ship-channel, and with ascending gradients
of 50 feet to the mile, across the shoal water on the Alameda shore, and in Mission Bay at
San Francisco. Spans 300 feet each,

160,900 cubic yards of masonry in 53 piers in deep water (3 miles)

32,600 cubic yards in 35 piers on the gradient on the Alameda

shore (2 miles) @ $30 978,000

32,600 cubic yards in 35 piers on the gradient on the San Fran-
cisco shore, @ $30 978,000

36,960 lineal feet (7 miles) of iron superstructure for double track,

wagon-road, and foot-passengers, @ $225 8,316,000

$15,099,000
Add 10 per cent, for superintendence and contingencies 1,509,900

Total cost .. .$16,608,900

Or $449 . 38 per lineal foot.

For the purpose of comparison, we quote, below, the cost of several long
bridges, the average of which is over $750 per lineal foot :

NAME.

Britannia

Niagara (suspension)

St. Charles

East River

Louisville

Menai Straits

Niagara Falls

Missouri River

New York to Brooklyn .
Ohio River

* Estimated.

rt,-T'2.

» S

rp-j

o'V.

0 "

• >r* a

: ?

102

1,841

$3,009,325

#1,635

245

1,290

400,000

310

6,57°

1,815,000

276

103

5=625

7,000,000*

1,244

5,280

1,600,000

303

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 33

Even if it were permissible to place a line of piers across ship - channel in the
Bay, nothing less than a permanent first-class structure, one hundred feet above
high tide, over ship-channel, would be allowed ; and the gradients of the approaches
should not exceed fifty feet to the mile, if designed for freight trains. The distance
from the Alameda shore to ship-channel (two miles) would accommodate the eastern
approach ; but, if the western approach started on the same level as the eastern,
the westerly end of the bridge would be two miles distant from the San Francisco
water front. To compensate for the height of the bridge, five miles must be added
to its length, to make it equivalent to a ievel way, for railroad purposes. (See
note, page 3, "Equating for Grades"). If the reader will figure the result, he will
find that, for all practical purposes in railroading, the distance from Alameda, or
Oakland point, via such a bridge, to the water front of San Francisco, would be
fourteen miles. Thus, San Francisco, by the expenditure of over sixteen millions,
could double the distance and time between herself and Oakland.

But it is not designed to build a first-class, high bridge- — it would not pay.
Indeed, our introductory remarks are based upon the assumption that a low bridge
is contemplated. We refer the reader to the foregoing estimates, if he desires to
fix in his imagination the cost of the undertaking, and we shall proceed to estimate
the benefits that might accrue from it, leaving out of the question the damages
that would result from destroying free navigation in the Bay, and the peril of
shoaling the Bar at the entrance of the harbor :

First — Building lots, and homestead sites, in Alameda County, would increase
largely in value, in anticipation of an exodus of families from San Francisco who
object to steamboat travel.

Second — Considering that the freight and passenger trains of the Central, and
the Southern Pacific, will soon approach Oakland from the north ; if the bridge
started from Oakland Point, passengers and freight might be carried -thence to
San Francisco, by rail, five minutes quicker than by rail and boat — providing no
"draws" were open, as frequently there would be. But Oakland would never
Consent to obstructing the Estuary of San Antonio from free commerce with the
ocean. Hence, the easterly end of the bridge, if constructed, would be at Alameda,
or at a point farther south.

Third — Assuming that it would be at Alameda point : the distance from Oakland
point (where the Oakland and Banta Branch will terminate) to Alameda point, via
the most available crossing of the Estuary, is five miles. It follows that passen-
gers might reach the San Francisco shore at Mission Bay — supposing the bridge
should terminate there, and no "open draws" were encountered — almost as soon
as they could reach the hotels by the Oakland Ferry. But the existence of the
bridge would not control, in the slightest degree, the movement of our export
products. The great freight route must intersect the Oakland wharf, as the map
shows ; and it is as reasonable to expect that grain, for export, would be trans-
ported from San Francisco to Oakland, via the proposed bridge, as to expect it to
be moved in the opposite direction. Mr. Friedlander, and San Francisco exporters
generally, having grain arriving at the Oakland wharf, would decline to incur the
needless risk and expense of transporting it from the Oakland docks to the San
Francisco docks, to gratify a sentiment. It may be added that the proposed bridge
could never be used for passenger travel, except for that between San Francisco
and Alameda counties. The liability of detention by "open draws" would render

34 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

it impossible for the railroad companies to run "through trains," by that route,
"on time."

If the hotels, churches, stores, and theatres of San Francisco, were removed
south of the bridge, it would compensate, in a measure, for some delays ; but, in
that event, it would become necessary to remove the Golden Gate to a point south
of the bridge — otherwise, the rapid increase of commerce on the water front of the
Potrero, and South San Francisco, would cause a "draw" to be kept open contin-
ually. One of the San Francisco papers has suggested the expedient of removing
"the heart of San Francisco" as far south as the Rolling Mill point, so that trains
might be run into it; but it is doubtful if the heart of San Francisco beats
responsive to the suggestion. Seriously, the whole scheme smacks so strongly of
outside property that it is impossible to disguise it.

Nobody doubts that San Francisco must continue to be the metropolis of the
Pacific coast; and the shallow efforts of a few speculators to frighten San Francis-
cans into committing an outrage against themselves, and their posterity, is highly
reprehensible. Already, more than one-fourth the population of the State is con-
gregated at San Francisco ; and considering her established advantages, and the
more luxurious habits of city folk, as compared with those of country folk, her
"city trade" may be estimated at nearly one -half of the trade of the State,
exclusive of the export trade. Of the California domestic trade, outside of the city,
she commands, and must ever command, the lion's share. The export trade be-
longs, and will always belong, exclusively to San Francisco, for she supplies money
for the movement of crops, and has a deeper interest than Oakland will ever have
in the economical handling of our export products. If machine shops are built at
Oakland, San Francisco men, with San Francisco capital, will build them; and the
profits of such enterprises will return to the fountain-head.

In short, Oakland is an invaluable adjunct to the cdmmerce of San Francisco ;
and far-seeing San Franciscans are proud, not jealous, of Oakland.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

The University of California was created with the view of carrying the public
educational system of the State up to its highest expression, in an institution
which should realize the broadest, freest, most liberal, and most advanced ideas of
University education. It receives its support from the extensive land -grants
made by the General Government to the State of California, for the establishment
of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts Colleges — a foundation which has been enlarged
by a liberal appropriation from the State Legislature. The University, accord-
ingly, is a State institution, and, as such, must be of equal interest to the people of
every section of California. Yet, the sphere of its activity is not bounded by the
lines of our own State, for its register shows that it already draws from every State
and Territory of the Pacific Coast, from Mexico, from South America, and from
the islands of the sea — a fact which strikingly illustrates the scope of the benefits
diffused by our young but progressive University.

The Act creating the University of California was passed by the State Legis-
lature at the session of 1867-8. It placed the supreme control of the institution

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 35

in a Board of Regents which is, at present, composed of the following gentlemen
of well-known culture, public spirit, and business ability :

EX -OFFICIO REGENTS.

His Excellency Henry H. Haight, Governor,

His Honor William Holden, Lieutenant-Governor.

Hon. George H. Rogers, Speaker of the Assembly.

Hon. O. P. Fitzgerald, D.D., State Superintendent of Public Instruction:

Hon. Charles F. Reed, President of the State Agricultural Society.

A. S. Hallidie, Esq., President of the Mechanics' Institute of San Francisco.

APPOINTED REGENTS.

John T. Doyle, Esq., Hon. Lawrence Archer,

Hon. Richard P. Hammond, Hon. William Watt,

Hon. John W. Dwinelle, Hon. Samuel B. McKee,

Rev. Horatio Stebbins, D.D., Hon. Samuel Merritt, M.D.

HONORARY REGENTS.*

Hon. Edward Tompkins, A. J. Bowie, M.D.,

J. Mora Moss, Esq., William C. Ralston, Esq.,

S. F. Butterworth, Esq., Hon. John B. Felton,

Hon. John S. Hager, Louis Sachs, Esq.

OFFICERS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS.

His Excellency H. H. Haight, President.
Andrew J. Moulder, Esq., Secretary.
William C. Ralston, Esq., Treasurer.

The University went into operation September 23d, 1869, with Professors
John and Joseph LeConte, Fisher, Swinton, Carr, Kellogg, Welcker, Pioda, Santi,
and Ogilby, as the faculty. Professor John LeConte was appointed Acting-
President by the Regents, and he continued in this position till the close of the
scholastic year ending with July, 1870. The second year of the University began
September 23d, 1870. In the intervening vacation, the Board of Regents had
elected to the Presidency, Professor Henry Durant. The Register gives the
following names, as composing the Faculty and Officers of the University :

Henry Durant, A.M., President, and Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy,
Stephen J. Field, LL.D., Non-resident Professor of Law.

John LeConte, M.D., Professor of Physics, Industrial Mechanics, and Physiology.
Joseph LeConte, M.D., Professor of Geology, Natural History, and Botany.
Martin Kellogg, A.M., Professor of Ancient Languages.
General W. T. Welcker, Professor of Mathematics.
Paul Pioda, Professor of Modern Languages.

Ezra S. Carr, M.D., Professor of Agriculture, Chemistry, Agricultural and
Applied Chemistry, and Horticulture.

* The term "Honorary," applied to these Regents, indicates only the mode of their election, which is
made by the Ex-officio and Appointed Regents. Every Regent, however appointed, is a voting, legislative,
and executive member of the Board.

36 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

William Swinton, A.M., Professor of the English Language and Literature,
Rhetoric, Logic, and History.

Thomas Bennett, M.D., Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine.

James Blake, M.D., Professor of Midwifery.

J. C. Shorb, M.D., Professor of Clinical Medicine.

J. D. B. Stillman, M.D., Professor of Materia Medica.

C. F. Buckley, M.D., Professor of Anatomy.

George Davidson, A.M., (Assistant U. S. Coast Survey), Non-resident Profes-
sor of Astronomy and Geodesy.

Colonel Frank Soule, Assistant Professor of Mathematics.

Robert E. Ogilby, Instructor in Drawing.

George Tait, A.M., Assistant Professor of Ancient Languages.

Professor William Swinton, Librarian.

It is believed that the history of education in the United States presents a no
more signal success, in the founding of a high institution of learning, than that
which has attended the University of California. Opening with about forty
students at the beginning of the first year, it has now on its catalogue the names
of seven hundred and ninety members of the several Colleges and of the Prepara-
tory Department.

The University consists of five distinct and independent Colleges, viz. : four
Colleges of Arts, and one College of Letters, as follows :

i. A State College of Agriculture, ~\

2. A State College of Mechanic Arts, I CaU,„~ nf Art.

3. A State College of Mines, [ Lolle£es °J /irts'

4. A State College of Civil Engineering. J

5. A State College of Letters.

The full course of instruction in each College embraces all appropriate studies,
and continues for at least four years. Each College confers a proper degree, at
the end of the course, upon such students as are found, upon examination, to be
proficient therein.

Partial courses are organized in each of the Colleges for students "who may
not desire to pursue a full course therein."

Besides the students pursuing the regular courses, any resident of California,
of approved moral character, has the right to enter himself in the University as a
student at large, and receive tuition in any branch or branches of instruction, at
the time when the same are given in the regular course, provided his preparatory
studies have been such as to qualify him to pursue the selected" branches ; and
provided, further, he selects a sufficient number of branches — the number being
designated by the Faculty.

Measures have been taken to carry out the provisions of the Act creating the
University, in respect to military instruction and discipline. Acting under direc-
tions from the Board of Regents, Professor Welcker and Assistant Professor
Soule', graduates of the West Point Academy, have organized the battalion of the
University Cadets. All able-bodied male students of the University are required
to attend the military exercises. The utility of such instruction and discipline is
generally conceded.

The University already possesses excellent apparatus, recently procured from
Europe, and valued at over $30,000, for the use of the Physical, Chemical, and

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 37

oilier Scientific Departments. There is also a Cabinet, rich in specimens collected
from various parts of the State, and the Legislature has specially provided that the
ample collections of the State Geological Survey shall be devoted to the uses of
the University.

By an Act of the Legislature, passed at its last session, five Scholarships were
established, each of the value of three hundred dollars a year, for four years, to be
competed for by candidates for the Fourth Class. It is expected and hoped that
the number of scholarships will be increased by private liberality.

From the foregoing statements which we compile from the "Register," it
will be seen that the University of California, in the second year of its existence,
already offers ample facilities for a thorough education. It has a large and com-
petent faculty of instruction, and costly and complete apparatus. It opens its
doors, without charge, to all of both sexes who are qualified to profit by its
advantages. The enlightened founders of the University of California laid its
basis upon live and modern ideas of education. It is wholly free from ancient
scholastic precedents and routine. It recognizes the equal dignity and worth of all
knowledges and arts, and hospitably affords opportunities to students desirous of
pursuing any specialty. Those who are enrolled as " students at large " can select
their own studies, and attend the exercises of any of the classes. There are still
shorter courses for those who can stay but a single term, or attend but a single
course of lectures. If any one wishes to study some practical branch of learning
— for example, metallurgy or agricultural chemistry — he will find here every
facility for its prosecution. In fine, it is a University in the full scope and mean-
ing of the term.

The University, while awaiting the erection of college edifices upon its exten-
sive and beautiful domain at Berkeley, (near Oakland), is occupying the old College
of California building, in this city, where it is probable the institution will remain
for a considerable time to come. The striking exhibit elsewhere made of the
healthfulness of Oakland, shows that in this respect it could not have been more
fortunately located.

PREPARATORY DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY.

Our sketch of the University would be far from complete, did we fail to notice
the recently created training-school, or " Preparatory Department."

The necessity of some training-school which should serve as a link between
the public-school system and the University, was felt soon after the latter went
into operation. It was at first sought to supply this link by the organization of a
Fifth Class. This was begun at the beginning of the last scholastic year, in
September, 1870. The experiment was a complete success — very large numbers of
pupils of both sexes having joined the "Fifth Class." Indeed, so unexpected was
the increase of the class, that it was found necessary to purchase the Brayton
school property, in order to afford accommodations for the students presenting
themselves. In January, 1871, this class, while still retaining its distinctive name,
was greatly enlarged in its scope by dividing it into various grades : thus establish-
ing a real training-school or preparatory department. This department of the
institution was put under the direction of Mr. George Tait, aided by an adequate
corps of excellent teachers. We believe the department now numbers (day-schol-
ars and boarders) upward of two hundred. It shows all the signs of enlarging and
lasting- usefulness.

38 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

PRIVATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.

Pacific Theological Seminary. — The seminary is under the auspices of
the Congregational Church. It has recently purchased the property of the Female
College of the Pacific, on Academy Hill, and the regular exercises were commenced
in June, 1871. Revs. George Mooar, D.D., and J. A. Benton, D.D., are Profess-
ors. There is a primary department, termed the Golden Gate Academy, and the
number of students in both is about twenty-five.

Mills Seminary. — Located near Fruit Vale, about four miles from Oakland.
The Mills Seminary enjoys a quiet seclusion, and is yet in almost hourly commu-
nication with the metropolis. Rev. C. T. Mills is Principal, and Rev. Eli Corwin
is his associate. There are two hundred young lady-students, and in all its depart-
ments the seminary is complete, and to it is conceded the position of the leading
institution for the education of girls on the Pacific coast, and is by many deemed
superior to any institution in the Eastern States.

Oakland Seminary and Female College of the Pacific. — This in-
stitution has been formed by the consolidation of the Female College of the Pacific,
and Mrs. Blake's Oakland Seminary; and the seminary buildings, in Oakland,
on Washington Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, are occupied. The
Rev. E. B. Walsworth is Principal, and he has called to his assistance an efficient
corps of teachers. There are one hundred scholars.

Oakland Military Academy. — This military institution, opened January
9th, 1865, is the first of the kind that has been established on this coast. Rev. D.
McClure is the proprietor and Principal. The academic staff is composed of nine
experienced teachers. The buildings are situated on a rise of ground, known as
Academy Hill, about a mile from the Broadway Station, and may be reached by
the Telegraph Avenue cars. In the academic department, well-defined and exten-
sive courses of study are pursued in the English branches, ancient and modern
languages, natural science, mathematics, and commercial knowledge, such as will
prepare students for college or business. The institution is also organized as a
military post, and it is obligatory upon every student to attend the daily military
drill, and perform the duties of a cadet, which do not interfere with hours of study.

Linden Lane Boarding School. — This school is located on Linden Lane,
near Telegraph Avenue, about two miles from Broadway Station. The number of
scholars is limited to sixteen, and the course of study is designed to fit boys to
enter the university or any college. D. C. Stone, A.M., is proprietor and Princi-
pal of the school.

Convent of our Lady of the Sacred Heart. — This is a girls' day and
boarding-school, and is located on Webster Street, at the head of Lake Merritt.
It was dedicated in the summer of 1868. The classes are taught by "Sisters of
the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary," who came from Canada. The school con-
tains sixty-one boarding-scholars and fifty-two day-scholars, and is in charge of St.
Mary's Catholic Church, having been built through the efforts of Rev. Father
King.

Madame Boullet's School. — Among the private schools of Oakland is a
modest little establishment, at the corner of Franklin and Fifth Streets, which has
been conducted for many years by Madame and Mademoiselle Boullet — Parisian

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 39

ladies. The boarders are limited to ten or twelve little girls, and the number of
day-scholars is also limited. Notwithstanding the unpretending character of the
school, it has long been justly celebrated for the parental care exercised over the
pupils, and the remarkable proficiency they acquire in the French language.

St. Joseph's Academy. — This school is for boys, and is conducted by the
Christian Brothers. It is located at the corner of Jackson and Fifth Streets.
Brother Gustavus is Principal, and the assistants are Brothers Alexander, Baptiste,
and Thomas. It was opened July 5th, 1870, with forty-five pupils, and at the
close of the December term, 1870, had eighty-five scholars in attendance.

J. C. Hyde's Day and Boarding-School. — This school is located on the
corner of Harrison and Sixth Streets, and has an attendance of about twenty schol-
ars, all boys.

The Sisters' School. — This school is located on Eighth Street, between
Grove and Jefferson, and is taught by Sisters Mary Augustine and Mary Pres-
celle, and has an attendance of about seventy-five day-scholars, all of them girls.

Mrs. Brown's and Miss Daniels' Day-School. — This school is located
on Eleventh Street, between Alice and Harrison Streets.

French and English School. — Madame D'Hierry's French and English
day-school is on Seventh Street, between Grove and Castro.

Alameda Academy. — This institution was opened January 2d, 1871. Prof.
J. T. Doyen is Principal.

Miss Barnes' School.^ — Miss Mary Barnes has a private day-school, on the
corner of Sixth and Clay Streets, with an attendance of fifty pupils.

Mrs. Fogg's School. — Mrs. George H. Fogg's day-school, corner of Frank-
lin and Second Streets, has an attendance of twelve scholars.

Brooklyn Private School. — Mrs. True has a flourishing private school in
Brooklyn, with an attendance of twenty-six girls and six boys.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

There are 5,436 children in Alameda County between the ages of five and fif-
teen years, 3,269 of whom are enrolled as attendants at the public schools. There
are 1,268 pupils in the public schools of Oakland. There are in the county, out-
side of Oakland, 66 schools, giving employment to 51 teachers. In Oakland,
there are six public school buildings, giving employment to 31 regular and four
special teachers. The total value of public school property in the city is $129,000.
The schools now open are as follows :

High School. — Corner of Market and West Twelfth Streets. . Cost of prem-
ises, $37,376 22. Principal, J. B. McChesney. Number of teachers, 3; number
of scholars, 65.

Lafayette Grammar School. — Location in High School building. Prin-
cipal, J. B. McChesney. Number of teachers, 8; number of scholars, 321.

Prescott Grammar School. — Second Street (West Oakland). Cost of
building, $ 10,000. Principal, A. W. Brodt. Number of teachers, 3; number of
scholars, 55.

4o OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

Lafayette Primary. — Corner of Twelfth and Jefferson Streets. Cost of
building, $17,000. Principal, Mrs. M. W. Phelps. Number of teachers, 8; num-
ber of scholars, 340.

Primary No. 2. — Corner of Alice and Sixth Streets. Cost of building,
$1,200. Principal, Miss F. Brigham. Number of teachers, 3; number of schol-
ars, 125.

Primary No. 3. — Corner of Grove and Fourth Streets. Cost of building)
$1,200. Principal, Miss Aldrich. Number of teachers, 4; number of scholars,
201.

In addition to these, there is an evening school, taught by F. M. Campbell,
City Superintendent of Public Schools, a French and a German class, which would
swell the number of pupils to 1,409, and the number of teachers to 35.

CHURCHES.

First Congregational. — Broadway, east side, between Tenth and Eleventh
Streets. Organized December 9th, i860. Temporary Pastor — George Mooar,
D.D. Deacons — T. B. Bigelow, E. P. Flint, R. E. Cole, and T. L. Walker.
Trustees— R. E. Cole, E. P. Flint, E. P. Sanford, Israel W. Knox, Wm. K. Row-
ell, and H. A. Palmer.

Second Congregational. — Oakland Point. Organized May 31st, 1868.
Pastor — Rev. S. D. Gray. Trustees— Jas. A. Folger, H. G. McLean, H. C. Em-
mons, E. E. Walcott, and L. P. Collins.

First Presbyterian. — South-east corner of Broadway and Thirteenth Streets.
Organized in 1852. Pastor — D. W. Poor, D.D. Elders — Samuel Percy, Elijah
Bigelow, J. J. Gardiner, Wm. C. Dodge, and G. W. Armes. Trustees — E. C.
Sessions, Wm. C. Dodge, Wm. H. Miller, J. J. Gardiner, Elijah Bigelow, J. M.
Selfridge, and J. Shanklin.

Independent Presbyterian. — South-east corner of Jefferson and Twelfth
Streets. Organized February 28th, 1869. Pastor — Rev. L. Hamilton. Trustees
— George C. Potter (Chairman), Henry Durant, David McClure, Charles Webb
Howard, J. P. Moore, John R. Glascock, J. S. Emery, N. W. Spaulding, and Hi-
ram Tubbs. Elders — Henry Durant and David McClure. Treasurer — William
B. Hardy.

Mission Congregational. — Second Street, between Broadway and Wash-
ington. Organized in the summer of 1868, under the control of the First Congre-
gational Church.

First Baptist. — Corner of Brush and Fourteenth Streets. Organized in 1854.
No permanent Pastor, at present. Deacons — William Watts and G. W. Dam.
Trustees — A. L. Warner, G. W. Dam, J. F. Havens, William Watts, and A. W.
Brodt. Church Clerk, A. W. Brodt; Treasurer, B. F. Pendleton.

St. John's Episcopal. — Corner of Grove and Seventh Streets. Organized
June, 1852. Rector — Rev. Benjamin Akerly. Vestrymen — Rev. Benjamin Aker-
ly (President), Ge,n. R. W. Kirkham (Senior Warden), Samuel Brockhurst (Junior
Warden), Charles D. Haven (Secretary and Treasurer), James De Fremery, J. N.
Olney, and R. H. Bennett.

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 41

St. Paul's Episcopal. — South-west corner of Webster and Twelfth Streets.
Organized 1871. Rector — Rev. C. W. Turner. Vestrymen — John A. Stanley,
A. I. Gladding, W. C. Parker, T. J. Hyde, Watson Webb, J. B. Harmon, R. C.
Alden, Dr. Babcock. Senior Warden — A. I. Gladding. Junior Warden — Wat-
son Webb.

St. Mary's Roman Catholic. — Seventh Street, between Grove and Jeffer-
son. Pastor — Rev. Michael King. Assistants — Fathers Byrne and Starra.

Methodist Episcopal. — South-west corner of Washington and Ninth Streets.
Pastor— Rev. T. S. Dunn. Trustees— M. T. Holcomb, J. Stratton, J. W. Carrick,
James C. Stratton, and C. H. Bradley.

THE MOUNTAIN VIEW CEMETERY.

Several years ago, leading citizens of Oakland, Brooklyn, and Alameda Town-
ships, secured a suitable location as a burial place for the dead. It comprises
about two hundred acres of undulating ground at the foot-hills, about two miles
eastwardly from Oakland. The Mountain View Cemetery Association was organ-
ized, and, under the operation of the State law, the ground has been dedicated
forever to the sacred purposes for which it was obtained. Mr. Fred. Law Olm-
stead, who laid out Central Park, in New York City, was employed to survey the
ground and lay out a plan for the cemetery. The plan presented by him was
adopted. Improvements of a high order have already been made ; and the officers
of the Association comprise gentlemen whose reputation affords a guarantee that
its affairs will be attended to with a view of making the cemetery all that could be
desired.

INSTITUTION FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB, AND BLEND.

The State Asylum for the education of the deaf and dumb, and the blind, is
located about four miles north of Oakland, on grounds adjoining those of the Uni-
versity. It is one of the most beneficent of our State institutions, and is exceed-
ingly interesting to visitors who care to see how novel and ingenious modes of
instruction, and patient endeavors, are made to overcome the greatest obstacles to
mental development. The building, a massive stone edifice, is considered by many
to be the finest piece of architecture in the State, and is supplied with all modern
improvements for the comfort and convenience of its inmates, and with all the pe-
culiar apparatus necessary for their instruction. The total cost of buildings,
grounds, etc., has been about $200,000 — an expenditure which indicates the lib-
erality and thoughtfulness of our people.

The present number of pupils is eighty-five. Fifty-nine are deaf and dumb,
and twenty- six are blind. The course of study embraces most of the branches
usually taught in our higher academies. Facilities are also afforded for the learning
of trades. The benefits of the institution, including board, tuition, and medical at-
tendance, are free to all deaf and dumb or blind persons, between the ages of six
and twenty-one years, who may be residents of the State.

The Board of Directors consists of J. Mora Moss, President ; Chas. J. Bren-
ham, Col. John C. Hayes, I. E. Nicholson, M.D., and Col. Harry Linden. The

42 . OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

corps of instructors in the deaf-mute department comprises Amasa Pratt, H. B.
Crandall, and Henry Frank. In the blind department, C. T. Wilkinson and M.
B. Clark. The Principal is Warring Wilkinson, to whom all letters of inquiry,
etc., should be addressed.

SOCIETIES AND ASSOCIATIONS.

MASONIC.

Live-Oak Lodge No. 6i, F. and A. M. — Instituted May 4th, 1855. Officers —
T. P. Wales, W. M. ; Wm. H. Irwin, S. W. ; Henry F. Evers, J. W. ; A. J. Ba-
ber, S. D. ; George E. Carleton, J. D. ; Rev. Benjamin Akerly, Chaplain ; J. E.
Whitcher, Treasurer; James Lentell, Secretary; F. Chappellet and Franklin War-
ner, Stewards; S. Hirshberg, Tyler.

Oakland Lodge No. 188, F. and A. M. — Instituted November 4th, 1868.
Officers— E. H. Pardee, W. M. ; W. J. Gurnett, S. W.; W. S. Snook, J. W. ; T.
W. Bailey, Secretary; Myron T. Dusenbury, Treasurer.

Oakland Chapter No. 26, R. A. M. — Instituted May 5th, i860. Officers —
Benjamin Akerly, H. P. ; George M. Blake, K. ; T. P. Wales, S. ; J. M. Miner,
C. H.; S. Nolan, P. S.; Henry F. Evers, R. A. C. ; Wm. H. Irwin, M. 3d V.;
Ernst Janssen, M. 2d V.; Wm. D. Harwood, M. 1st V.; J. E. Whitcher, Treas-
urer; S. Hirshberg, Secretary; H. E. Hitchcock, Guardian.

Alameda Chapter No. 36, R. A. M. — Instituted November nth, 1868.
Officers— N. W. Spaulding, H. P.; Walter Van Dyke, K.; E. H. Pardee, S. ; C.
C. Knowles, C. H. ; W. J. Gurnett, P. S.

INDEPENDENT ORDER OF ODD FELLOWS.

Oakland Lodge No. 118. — Instituted July 3d, 1865. Officers — S. P. Knight,
N. G.; R. Dalziel, V. G. ; John Demott, R. S.; A. B. Brower, P. S.; Chas. Bar-
low, T. ; Wm. L. McKay, Peter Baker, and S. K. Hassinger, Trustees.

University Lodge No. 144. — Instituted June 20th, 1868. Officers — M. S.
Hurd, N. G. ; T. A. Bell, V. G. ; C. J. Robinson, R. S. ; George E. Farwell, P. S.;
J. V. B, Goodrich, T.

Alameda Degree Lodge No. 5. — Instituted February 13th, 1869. Offi-
cers— W. J. Gurnett, N. G. ; J. Barnett, V. G. ;• S. H. Goddard, Secretary; Geo.
H. Fogg, Treasurer.

Golden Rule Encampment No. 34. — Officers — J. Ingols, C. P.; S. K.
Hassinger, H. P. ; R. Dalziel, S. W. ; B. Van Vrankin, J. W. ; C. H. Townsend,
Secretary; A. B. Brower, Treasurer; J. E. Marchand, J. Lufkin, and B. C.
Austin, Trustees.

Odd Fellows' Hall Association. — Incorporated June, 1869. Location
of building, north-west corner of Franklin and Eleventh Streets. Capital stock,
$16,000. Directors — J. E. Marchand, President; T. J. Murphy, Vice-President;
W.J. Gurnett, Secretary; J. L. Browne, Treasurer; W. L. McKay, Peter Baker,
and O. H. Burnham.

Odd Fellows' Library Association, — Organized August 12th, 1867.
Number of volumes, 2,500, free to members of contributing Lodges, of which

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. i 43

there are two — Oakland Lodge No. 118, and University Lodge No. 144. Trus-
tees— From Oakland Lodge, S. K. Hassinger and W. Clayton ; from University
Lodge, F. L. Taylor, C. J. Robinson, and B. C. Austin. Officers — C. J. Robin-
son, President; S. K. Hassinger, Vice-President; B. C. Austin, Recording Sec-
retary; F. L. Taylor, Corresponding Secretary; W. Clayton, Treasurer; A. B.
Brower, Librarian.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Alameda Stamm No. 113, I. O. R. M. — Organized 1867. Officers — W.
Jordan, O. Ch. ; Henry Kornahrens, U. Ch. ; P. Ferrhan, R. S. ; A. Koop, Treas-
urer; A. Eisenbach, F. Secretary.

Cherokee Tribe No. 127, Improved Order of Red Men. — Organized
1869. Officers— H. Nagle, S.; A. T. Potter, S. S. ; Wm. Ballantyne, G. S.; W.
T. Myles, K. of V. ; J. C. Plunket, C. of R.

Athens Lodge, I. O. G. T— Organized 1867. Officers— G. M. Blake, W.
C. T.; S. Campbell, P. W. C. T.; Miss Irwin, W. V. T.; T. Bell, W. S.; A. B.
Brower, W. F. S.

Turn Verein. — Organized 1866. Officers — D. Vogt, President; Wm. Hum-
meltenberg, Vice-President; Henry Sohst, First Secretary; George Bundat,
Second Secretary; H. Heyer, Treasurer; Wm. Koch, Librarian; G. Kraft, First
Leader; J. Nitman, Second Leader.

Oakland Benevolent Society. — Organized 1869. Officers — Dr. R. E.
Cole, President; F. S. Page, Secretary; Dr. B. F. Pendleton, Treasurer; I. W.
Knox, Rev. J. E. Benton, and G. W. Armes, Trustees.

Knights of Pythias. — Organized 1870. Officers — R. Swarbrick, V. P.;
Charles A. Perkins, W. C. ; D. B. Bankhead, V. C. ; Wm. Parish, G. ; Samuel
Bailey, R. S. ; Charles Parry, F. S. ; F. W. Butler, B. ; Wm. Myles, I. G. ; E. G.
Jones, O. G.

Oakland Hebrew Benevolent Society. — Organized 1862. Officers —
Jacob Letter, President; Henry Ash, Vice-President; S. Beal, Treasurer; S.
Hirshberg, Secretary; N. Rosenberg, J. Alexander, L. Greenbaum, Trustees.

St. Joseph's Benevolent Society. — Organized 1867. Officers — John
Kearney, President; P. R. Sheehan, Vice-President; John Carry, Secretary;
Patrick Scully, Treasurer; Thomas Dagnan, Clerk; Dr. S. Belden, Physician.

Ancient Sons of Hibernia. — Organized July 7th, 1870. Officers — James
McGuire, President; J. O'Connell, Vice-President; S. D. Cronin, Corresponding
Secretary; John Teague, Financial Secretary; E. Fitzgerald, Treasurer. The
Society numbers one hundred members.

ALAMEDA GOUNTY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.

Organized October 25, 1869. Incorporated January 9, 1871. List of members
— Clinton Cushing, M.D., President; E. Trenor, M.D., Vice-President; N. E.
Sherman, M.D., Treasurer; John C. Van Wyck, M.D., Librarian; H. P. Bab-
cock, M.D., Secretary; T. H. Pinkerton, M.D., Stillman Holmes, M.D., Joseph
Leconte, M.D., John Leconte, M.D., Ezra S. Carr, M.D., R. Beverly Cole, M.D.,
Thomas C. Hanson, M.D., Wm. Bamford, M.D., Wm. Bolton, M.D., John Van
Zandt, M.D., W. R. Fox, M.D., C. S. Coleman, M.D.

44 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

MILITARY COMPANIES.

Oakland Guard. — Organized in 1861. Officers — Alfred W. Burrell, Cap-
tain; John C. Orr, First Lieutenant; E. R. Turner, Second Lieutenant; H. Ma-
loon, Orderly Sergeant.

Live- Oak Zouaves. — Organized in 1870. Officers — E. J. Kelley, Captain;
Thomas Treanor, First Lieutenant; John F. Teague, Second Lieutenant; James
Marchand, Orderly Sergeant.

Oakland Grenadiers. — Organized in 1870. Officers — J. Callaghan, Cap-
tain; A. Herrin, First Lieutenant; S. Cronin, Second Lieutenant.

OAKLAND BANK OF SAVINGS.

Organized August 27, 1867. Capital stock, $150,000. Capital increased March
30, 1869, to $300,000; increased May 9, 1871, to $1,000,000.

Officers — P. S. Wilcox, President; J. L. Browne, Cashier.

Board of Directors— P. S. Wilcox, E. M. Hall, Samuel Merritt, T. B.
Bigelow, Walter Blair.

The following is from the report of July 1, 1871 :

Stock and reserve fund $141,974 21

Due Depositors 246,098 01

Due Dividend No. 8 22,414 25

$410,486 47

Loans and bonds $340,645 48

Office Furniture 2,470 78

Stamps and currency 696 00

Cash in vault, San Francisco, and New York 66,674 zx,

$410,486 47

UNION SAVINGS BANK.

Incorporated July 1, 1869, with a capital stock of $300,000, which was increased
July 1, 1870, to $500,000.

Officers — A. C. Henry, President; J. West Martin, Vice-President; H. A.
Palmer, Cashier and Secretary.

Board of Directors — A. C. Henry, J. West Martin, John C. Hays, E.
Bigelow, E. A. Haines, Samuel Woods, Chas. Webb Howard, Hiram Tubbs, H.
H. Haight, C. T. H. Palmer, S. Huff, W. W. Crane, Jr., R. W. Kirkham, R. S.
Farrelly, A. W. Bowman, J. Mora Moss.

The following is extracted from the report of this bank, October 1, 1871 :

Capital stock paid in $450,000 00

Deposits • 271,484 43

Profit and loss 10,681 90

$732,166 33

Loans, bonds, etc $621,090 07

Cash on hand 76,279 1 1

Sundries, including expense account, banking house,

vaults, etc 34, 797 15

$732,i66 33

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 45

NEWSPAPERS.

There are three newspapers published in Oakland, as follows :

The Oakland Daily Transcript — Issued every morning (Sundays except-
ed). John Scott, proprietor.

The Oakland Daily News — Issued every morning (Sundays excepted).
William Gagan, proprietor.

The Evening Termini — Issued every evening (Sundays excepted). By the
Termini Company.

BROOKLYN.

Brooklyn is situated eastwardly from Oakland, and is bounded on two sides by
the Estuary of San Antonio, as will be seen on the map. Its site is higher than
that of Oakland, and is gently undulating. The bridge across the Estuary, con-
necting the two places, is eighty feet wide. The town government is organized as
follows :

Town Officers — H. A. Mayhew, President ; A. Cannon, H. Tubbs, Charles
Newton, H. Turn Suden, Trustees; J. F. Steen, Clerk and Treasurer; E. E.
Webster, Assessor; O. Whipple, Marshal. School Trustees — A. W. Swett, C.
C. Knowles, F. Buell.

The main street (Washington) has been graded and macadamized from the
Twelfth-street bridge to Park Avenue. Many buildings have been erected during
the past year. A large first-class hotel, with accommodations for three hundred
persons, is almost completed, and many of the rooms are already engaged. The
Contra Costa Water Company have laid their mains from Oakland, for the purpose
of supplying the town with water, and hydrants for the use of the Fire Department
have been placed at various points. The mains of the Oakland Gas Light Com-
pany have also been carried into the town.

The School Department is well organized and conducted.

The town has four churches — viz : one Presbyterian, Rev. Oliver Hemstreet ;
one Baptist, Rev. T. C. Jameson; St. Anthony's Catholic Church, under the
supervision of Rev. Father King ; and the Episcopal Church, Rev. Mr. Wilbur,
Rector.

The absence of oaks in Brooklyn, which add so much to the charms of Oak-
land, is compensated, in a measure, by the picturesque scenery on every side. Its
water front on the Estuary of San Antonio, with the rail tracks along the bank,
gives it great prospective importance as a location for manufactures, and already
there are several manufacturing establishments in successful operation.

At several places near the «Estuary, overflowing artesian wells have been
obtained by sinking one hundred and fifty feet.

ALAMEDA, AND THE WEBSTER -STREET BRIDGE.

The beautifully situated and rapidly growing town of Alameda, distant about
two miles from Oakland, has been brought into direct communication with this city
by the erection of a draw -bridge, spanning San Antonio Creek, from the foot of
Webster Street. From the bridge, a macadamized road has been constructed over

46 OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

the marsh land, which is nearly a mile in breadth. The progress of tne town can
not fail to be much accelerated by the completion of this important thoroughfare ;
and the advantages to be derived therefrom by the people of both places can not
be too highly estimated.

The peninsula upon which the town is located, is about three and a half miles
long by one mile wide, comprising an area of about 2,200 acres of remarkably fer-
tile soil, ornamented by a profusion of oaks. An abundance of excellent water is
obtainable within a few feet of the surface.

Nature has made the Encinal a charming resort for people of rural tastes ; and
during the summer months its groves and parks are visited by thousands from San
Francisco and neighboring places. The township contains about five hundred
families, most of whom own the property upon which they reside. In Alameda,
there are many delightful residences, including that of his Excellency, the Gov-
ernor of California.

THE LOCAL RAILROAD AND FERRY.

The location of the road and wharf is shown on our map of Oakland, and a
description of the wharf and slip may be found in the article quoted from the Alta
(page 9). ' There is a large depot on the southerly side of the slip, for the exclusive
accommodation of the local passenger trains, and the facilities for the movement
of passengers are excellent.) The local track is of heavy "fish-joint" iron, and
runs up the wharf between the through-track and the carriage-way, with a safety-
rail 6n each side where, otherwise, there would be a possibility of accident.

A STEAM FIRE-ENGINE.

As a guard against fire, an elegant locomotive — the "White Eagle" — with a
steam-pump attachment, a tank-car, and coils of hose, is kept constantly in readi-
ness, to fly to this point or that, with lightning speed.

THE FERRY SLIP

At San Francisco, is near the foot of Pacific street, but the improvements about
it are inferior. Provision has been made for the safety of passengers, but the
arrangements for their comfort are not suggestive of the civilization of 1871.'] We
may assume the reason to be that the railroad company does not regard the loca-
tion as a permanent one. Public considerations suggest that the Board of State
Harbor Commissioners should assign to the company a place near the foot of
Market Street, with guarantees of permanency which would justify the construc-
tion of creditable improvements for the accommodation, not only of local travelers,
but of the thousands who visit us from abroad. We say the foot of Market Street
because the system of streets in San Francisco admits of no other proper location.
From that point, and that alone, the street railroads could be made to radiate to
every part of San Francisco, and equalize both convenience to travelers, and the
benefits resulting to property.

RAILROAD AVENUE.

Returning to Oakland, we must admit that Railroad Avenue, through which
the local road runs, is one of the least attractive streets in our city. Nature has
done her part, but the railroad company and the property holders have not done
theirs. There are six stations between the Bay and the Estuary, with miserable
sheds at five, and not a respectable platform at one, The street is not macadam-

OAKLAND AND VICINITY. 47

ized; only a few patches of sidewalk are made ; and travelers from San Francisco,
or elsewhere, are not favorably impressed with that portion of our city. Arrange-
ments are in progress, however, to remedy these defects. The city, the railroad
company, and the property owners on the avenue, are cooperating in the matter,
and the sandy, unattractive, and tiresome street will soon be transformed into a
beautiful boulevard.

THE BOAT AND CAR ACCOMMODATIONS

Are not surpassed on any similar line of travel. The steamer El Cafiitan, which
performs the ferry service, is about one thousand tons burden, and is a stanch,
powerful, and elegantly constructed boat. Moreover, the attention and forethought
which insure punctuality and safety, are not wanting. The local Superintendent is
accomplished in his profession, and unremitting in his watchfulness. The follow-
ing statistics of travel and casualties, attest his efficiency, and demonstrate

THE SAFETY OF TRAVELING.

During the year 1870, the cars and boat made twelve trips per day, each way.
The average number of passengers to each trip was one hundred and eighty, mak-
ing four thousand three hundred and twenty passengers per day, or over one mill-
ion and a half for the year — more than ten times the population of San Francisco.
In this vast movement of passengers, not one fatal accident occurred. Only two
persons were injured, and the Company was not accused of responsibility in either
case. The Company has recently attached the "atmospheric brake" to its local
trains, by means of which the engineer can stop his train almost instantly.

THE INCREASE OF TRAVEL

Is perceptible from month to month, and it is understood that the Company will
soon multiply the trips. Indeed, it is quite evident that the time is not distant
when crossings will be made every ten minutes; and persons seeking homesteads
can safely depend upon realizing this prediction.

THE ESTUARY ROUTE,

Or "Creek Route," as it is commonly called, is used by boats and vessels carry-
ing passengers and freight to and from Oakland, and Brooklyn. At present, three
steamers, and a number of sailing craft, are plying on this route, which is open to
competition. The importance of the estuary is alluded to elsewhere. Its improve-
ment is a question of not much time; and those who rely upon seeing first-class
passenger boats navigating its waters at an early day, will not be disappointed.

A RECREATIVE TRIP.

Thousands of people in San Francisco have never visited this side of the Bay,
and are in unblissful ignorance of the attractions which it offers, and of the recrea-
tive and invigorating nature of the trips to and from Oakland. The street- car
trips, from the business portion of San Francisco to or from any point in that city
where residence property costs even doteble that of residence property in Oakland,
consume more time than the trips between San Francisco and Oakland ; and the
monotony and discomfort of street-car travel make the former appear twice as long
as the latter.

FARES.

The fares between Oakland and San Francisco are as follows : Monthly com-
mutation tickets, $3; transient passengers, fifteen cents for regular line, except
Sundays, when tickets for crossing and recrossing are sold for twenty- five cents.
The fare by the opposition boat — the Chin-du-Wan — is ten cents.

OAKLAND AND VICINITY.

ALAEVIEDA COUNTY STATISTICS.

The following report of the agricultural products, improvements, and general
industries of the county, for 1870, is from the books of the County Assessor,
Edwin Hunt:

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

Land inclosed, acres 91,328

Land cultivated, acres 117,763

Wheat, acres 65,991

Wheat, bushels 1,017,031

Barley, acres 36,030

Barley, bushels • 505,670

Oats, acres 31240

Oats, bushels 98,460

Rye, acres 2,5 10

Pye, bushels 137,000

Corn, acres 562

Corn, bushels 13, 180

Buckwheat, acres 17

Buckwheat, bushels 204

Peas, acres 166

Peas, bushels 4,038

Peanuts, acres None.

Peanuts, pounds None.

Beans, acres 599

Beans, bushels 5,975

Castor Beans, acres None.

Castor Beans, pounds.^ . . . . None.

Potatoes, acres !,oi3

Potatoes, bushels 82,640

Sweet Potatoes, acres None.

Sweet Potatoes, bushels None.

Onions, acres 293

Onions, bushels 25, 108

Hay, acres 7,465

Hay, tons I2,475

Flax, acres 375

Flax, pounds 68,600

Hops, acres 5

Hops, pounds 1,870

Tobacco, acres None.

Tobacco, pounds None.

Beets, tons 1,295

Turnips, tons 32

Pumpkins and Squashes, tons 1,280

Butter, pounds 75,355

Cheese, pounds 4,218

Wool, pounds 215,775

Honey, pounds 4,325

TREES AND VINES.

Apple Trees 86,615

Peach Trees !3,595

Pear Trees 35,568

Plum Trees 21,264

Cherry Trees 28,788

Nectarine Trees .' 962

Quince Trees 1,992

Apricot Trees 3,566

Fig Trees 1,015

Lemon Trees 38

Orange Trees 23

Olive Trees

Prune Trees , .

Mulberry Trees

Almond Trees

Walnut Trees

Gooseberry Bushes

Raspberry Bushes

Strawberry Vines 5.

Grape Vines

Blackberry Bushes

251

4,120

120

9,249

i,552

43,739

725,882

758,860

136,148

32,200

Wines, gallons

WINES AND LIQUORS.

. . . . 3,080 I Brandy, gallons.

500

LIVE STOCK.

Horses 6,525

Mules 733

Asses II

Cows 4,063

Calves 2,462

Beef Cattle 1,881

Oxen 327

Total No. Cattle, incl'g Stock Cattle . . 16,002

Sheep 45,276

Hogs 34,772

Chickens 57,05*

Turkeys ». . 3,791

Geese 971

Ducks 7,042

Hives of Bees 318

IMPROVEMENTS.

Grist Mills

Steam Power

Run of Stone.
Water Power

Run of Stone.

Barrels of Flour made 36,470

Bushels of Corn ground 21,496

Railroads 4

Miles in length 90^

Land cultivated in 1870, acres 112,750

Acres of Wheat sown in 1S70. . . .
Acres of Barley sown in 1870. . . .
Assessed value of Real Estate . . .$8.
Assessed value of Improvements.. $1.
Assessed value Personal Property .$2.
Total .assessed value Property. . . $11.

Estimated total population

Registered voters

Poll-tax collected

58,750

41,075
084, 150
532,560
164,671
786,381

24,000
4,200

$7,403

REPORT

-OF-

H. R. LEONARD,

EN-ailSTEER OIF THE

m ' !l * ' ' lilfilffl:

RAIL-ROAB.

STOCKTON :

CONLEY & PATRICK, PRINTERS.
18 6 2.

REPORT OF H. R. LEONARD,

ENGINEER OF THE

JploMummj <pg and ^Swdbriijgij |btlroa.i

Having completed the surveys for- the location of this Road from
the Sacramento river to the town, of "Woodbridge, and the examina-
tion of the surrounding country, it becomes my duty to report in
detail to the friends and patrons of the enterprise the progress of
the work since its commencement und»r my charge.

The important and growing' necessity^ of a central and permanent
highway from the Metropolis of the Pacific to the mineral region
is apparent to all; and to attain fhis desirable object many specula-
tive advantages have been canvassed fox the past few years, as to
the most proper, convenient and economical route to be adopted :
the claims of many have been advocated with ability and strength-
ened by their local influences, have succeeded in attracting consid-
erable public attention; without desiring to detract in flie least
from their pretensions, I nevertheless claim advantages for this
proposed route possessed by no other, and which are fully substan-
tiated by well established facts. I shall here avoid those specula-
tive and visionary ideas too frequently found incorporated in reports
of this character.

After having carefully examined the various approaches to the
Sacramento river from the highlands, I determined upon establish-
ing the lower terminus of the road at Sharp's Ranch, or as sometimes
called, Walnut Grove, in Sacramento County ; situated on what is

known as the old river, 12^ miles above Rio Vista, and 40J miles
above Benicia; 41 miles below Sacramento and immediately at the
bead of Georgiana Slough, in latitude 38° 22' north, longitude
121° 23' west; from this point the line runs due East four miles
through tule and marsh land, crossing Snodgrass Slough and the
Mokelumne River to a point near Mokelumne City; from this
point the line diverges to the South, radiating half a mile South,
thence is nearly a straight line along the southerly bank of tbe
Mokelumne River in a south easterly direction to the town of
Woodbridge in San Joaquin County; the entire length of the Road
to this point is 13 miles, and to the eye it presents a gradual grade;
the security against extreme high water renders it a matter of
necessary precaution that embankments of sufficient bight be thrown
np for the bed of the track ; an average of 2^ feet for eight miles
of the road is deemed high enough to place the track above any
contingency that may arise, and would place it one foot above the
recent high water mark.

No apprehensions are felt in regard to the safety of the road in
extreme floods; the overflow being mostly created by backwater,
producing but little current to endanger by washing the trestling or
breaking the embankments of any portion of the Road.

Near Mokelumne City, also through the tule and low lands
between the Mokelumne and Sacramento Rivers, the construction
of considerable trestle work and piling will become necessary ; but
I find no difficulty whatever in accomplishing the work over the
tules at this point; finding by a careful examination that they are
underlaid by a tough blue clay, in no place over 12 feet and in many
places less than 6 feet in depth ; the entire length is estimated at
4§ miles, average height seven feet; from the Mokelumne west ot
the Sacramento River one mile will ascend three feet; thence
west 3f miles will be level ; from the Mokelumne River to Wood-
bridge I find a gradual ascent and easy grade of only 24 feet and
4 inches in 8f miles, or about three feet to the mile.

The graduation is estimated for a road bed S feet in width on top,
and for side slopes of 1^ feet horizontal, to one foot of altitude.

It will be necessary to transport nearly or quite all of the materials
for the superstructure of the road from San Francisco ; I would
therefore recommend its commencement at the Mokelumne River ;
in doing so I will be enabled to transport East and West on the

line as it progresses all necessary material and implements, ensuring
at an early day its completion to the highlands.

The present length of the road being but 13 miles, I deem it
unnecessary to divide the estimate into more than four divisions, as
follows :

ESTIMATED COST OF GRADING AND BRIDGING THE FIRST DIVISION.

Extending from Woodbridge to Mr. Washington Farmer's East
line, distance 1^ mile.

5683 cubic yards of earth ploughed and scraped from sides, at 28 cts.

per yard, SI, 591 44

Grubbing and clearing, 400 00

Culverts and Pit Gates, 500 00

Total, 82,491 44

SECOND DIVISION.

Extending from the east side of Mr. Farmer's land and termina-
ting at the South side of Mrs. Elvira Lewis' land, distance 2^ miles.

4,644 cubic yards, at 28 cts. per yard, 81,300 02

Grubbing and clearing, 475 00

Bridges and enclosures, 680 00

Total, .$2,455 02

THIRD DIVISION.

Extending from Mrs. Lewis' South line to the North line of the
land owned and occupied by Jeremiah Posey, f of a mile in length.

1,723 cubic yards at 37 cts. per yard, $ 637 51

Grubbing and clearing, 310 00

Bridging, etc., 700 00

Total, §1,647 51

FOURTH DIVISION.

Commencing at the North line of Tosey's to a distance 2-g miles.

37,384 cubic yards at 44 cts. yeryard, $16,448 96

Bridging Slough, etc., 875 00

Grubbing and clearing, 1,700 00

Total, $19,023 96

The grading from the Sacramento River to Snodgrass Slough :

1,955 cubic yards, at 40 cts per yard, % 782 00

Total estimate for the grading from Woodbridge, 8 miles West,

including the requisite grading through to the Sacramento Itiver.s

Miles. Amount.

First Division, lg $ 2,491 44

Second Division, 2k 2,455 02

Third Division, | 1,647 56

Fourth Division ....„ 2£ 19,023 96

From the Fourth Division to the Sacramento, i 782 00

Total, Si $26,399 93

I find that from the Mokelumne River "Wiest, to Snodgrass

Slough, distance ^ of a mile, and also East If of a Pile, piling is
found necessary, and I would recommend a double row of 12 inch
redwood piles, driv.en 8 .feet from centers.

There will be required for this portion of the work :

3,132 piles, averaging 20 feet in length, at 30 cts. per foot, $18,692 00

Driving the same, at $4 00 each, 12,528 00

1,566 cross caps, 8 feet long, 12x12, 150,336 feet at $24 per M 3,607 96

There will be 24. miles of trestling ; I would recommend the bents to be

7 feet from centers, and theposts to average 8x8 incthes; the cross caps

8x10, and the mud sills 10x12,

3,394 post, 8 feet long, 8x8, 144, S10 feet, at $24 per M, 3,475 44

1,697 cross caps, 8x10, 8 feet long, 90,173 feet, at $24 per M 2,162 15

1,697 mud sills 12 feet long, 10x12, 202,640 feet, at $24 per M 4,863 60

There will be required for top stringers 4J miles ; 2 strings 10x12 each,

47,520 lineal feet measurement ; 475,200 feet, at '$24 per M „.. 11,404 80

For lumber and work required on pile Bridge over Snodgrass Slough,

210 feet, at $18 per foot, 3,780 00

Draw Bridge over the Mokelumne , 16,000 00

Labor on trestle work, capping piles and putting on stringers, 8,880 00

Iron work, straps, bolts, etc., in full, 3,700 00

For the ties of the road I would recommend red wood, 6x8 inches, hewn

and planed, 3 feet from centers.

22,880 ties. 8 feet long, 6x8, at 50 cents each, _ 11,440 00

For laying ties, 4,200 00

For bracing, including lumber and labor, 15,000 00

Total estimate for trestling and bridging to Sacramento River, $119,733 95

RAILS, ^CHAIRS, SPIKES, ETC.

The T Rail, together with. all the necessary Chairs, Spikes, etc., I have

estimated at 100 tons to the mile, at a cost of $60 per ton, 78,000 00

For laying the Rail per mile. $800, 10,400 00

Total, .' $ 88,400 00

Total estimated cost of material and labor for 13 miles, 208,133 95

Or on average of $18,041 06 per mile.
I would recommend the construction of a good and substantial wharf at

the lower terminus, that will cost 5,000 00

' The necessary Engine Houses, Depots, Watering Tanks, and other fix-
tures to answer the requirements for five years after its completion,

will cost 15,000 00

Way Station Houses along the road, 4,000 00

One Machine Shop, with tools complete, 15,000 08

Two Turn Tables, complete, each $1,500, 3,000 00

-Total, „ $ 42*000 00

FOR THE TfcOLLIXG STOCK,

I submit the foTlowiug estimate, to answer for present requirements.

Two Locomotives and tenders, at $6,000 each, „ $ 12,000 00

Four passenger cars, each $2,500, , 10,000 00

One baggage car, , 1.000 00

Twelve platform ears, each $600, 7.200 00

Eight covered freight cars, each $800, 6,400 00

Two gravel cars, each $100, 800 00

Three hand ears, each $200, 600 00

Total. „ $ 38,000 00

I would also reconrmend the fencing of the track for six miles, at a cost

of $400 per mfler„ $ 2,400 00

The freightage of iron, cars and material, and putting the rolling stock

in complete running order, I have estimated at 6,000 00

RECAPITULATION,

Of the cost of the entire Road in running order :

Grading $ 26.309 93

Trestlingand Bridging 119,733 9.5

Iron rails, etc., and laving track 88.400 00

Side Tracks and Switches „ 18,041 06

Engine Houses, Depots, 'Watering Tanks, Wharf, Way Station Houses,

Machine Shop, Turn Tables, etc., ! 42,000 00

Rolling Stock 38,000 00

Fencing , 2,400 00

Transportation, 6,000 00

Contingent expenses, 22,003 30

Total, $362,978 24

For the present it would, in my judgment, be advisable to termi-
nate 3£ miles West of Woodbridge, reaching at that point high
land and securing nearly all the advantages obtained if completed
to Woodbridge ; making a reduction from the present requirements
of $63,143 71, thus completing the road to what is known as the
Snug, on the premises of L. Dougherty, at an expense of only
$299,834 53.

This Road passing through ;an agricultural country, and being
heavily timbered, the interests of the Road and the convenience of
the community will demand stopping points or way Stations not far
distant apart ; I would therefore recommend the location of one near
Mokelumne City, one at or near Mr. -Joseph Kyle's place, distant
from the Mokelumne River 4£ miles, and one at Mr. Dougherty's,
requiring in all about one mile of side track, at a cost of $1S,041 06,
included in my estimate to Woodbridge, at the aggregate cost of
$362,978 24.

The Road can be completed within one year from its commence-
ment, and I would recommend an early beginning, as the latter

portion of the year is the most appropriate, on account of the high
water in the low lands during the spring season.

I propose in connection with this Report to give statistics based
upon official authority, showing the amount of agricultural produc-
tions of various kinds, annually, and other articles of export from
that portion of San Joaquin County through which the road passes,
and which, in its local importance, would alone warrant the con-
struction of the proposed work, taking into consideration that when
it shall be 'placed in working order the impetus that will be given
to various enterprises now dormant from the want of proper facilities
of transportation and encouragement, must be developed and add to
the revenue of this road.

The item of cord wood alone is one of great importance. By
careful examination and estimate, I arrive at the conclusion that
Avithin six miles on eitber side of the road, there is the enormous
amount of 1,000,000 cords of wood now standing, which must find
its market at San Francisco, and which would be forwarded by this
Railroad in quantities as great as would be the facilities offered for
carrying the same. I will here observe that in this estimate an
equal, and possibly a greater amount, is reserved for home con-
sumption.

The cost at present of the transportation of wood per cord, hence
to San Francisco, is four dollars ; when this road shall be in working
order to its terminus on the Sacramento River, where vessels of
large capacity can receive it, transportation to San Francisco may
be reduced one-half — and in this article alone, steady and certain
returns will enure to this road. In connection may be mentioned
with this item, charcoal, hoop-poles, stave timber, and ship timbers
which at present, to a limited extent only form articles of export
from this rich and much favored section.

It should be understood that from the point at which this Road
proposes to tap the Sacramento River, to its terminus at Woodbridge,
its course is through one of the most fertile sections which this State
can boast of; that portion of San Joaqnin County lying between
its Northern boundary and the Calaveras River, from natural causes
makes this route the unavoidable channel through which to ship
their surplus and receive their supplies That entire country com-
prised in the above specified limits of San Joaquin County may be

regarded a solid farm, every acre being enclosed except that portion
which is only valuable as pasture and mineral lands.

This fact being understood and well known, it is generally con-
ceded that the section referred to, in agricultural productions, stock,
and general wealth, represents at least one-half of the entire county ;
hence, we may justly claim for this Road the transportation of such
surplus as may seek San Francisco for its market; keeping in view
the fact that the work proposed when completed will, from the
facility it renders, induce a greatly increased ratio of acres to be
placed in cultivation, the results of which, in a local and carrying
sense, becoming tributary to this work.

The agricultural productions of this section of the County, based
upon the latest official report, and from the propositions heretofore
made of local advantages, the following statement may be considered
thoroughly reliable, to-wit :

Wheat, 511,444 bushels. Peas,... 1,000 bushels.

Barley, 651,812 " Beans, 500

Oats, 21,140 " Potatoes, 100,000

Rye, 8,000 " Sweet potatoes 750

Corn, 15,000 " Onions, 7,000

Buckwheat, .... 8,000 " Hay, 25,714 tons.

Butter, eggs, cheese, wool, hidWs, honey, live stock, etc., produced
in this section, will, of course, when transported, add their quota
for carriage. Here it is proper to state that by the construction of
this Road an extensive tract of valuable grazing and hay land, lying
between the Mokelumne and Sacramento Rivers, North and South
of the road, now valueless, will become a matter of much interest and
importance to this work; from the fact that three to four tons per acre
of excellent natural hay can be cut therefrom and transported hence.
This Road will also afford facilities for the transportation of cattle
to and from this extensive range, at present not approachable.

What proportion of the surplus of this entire section may require
transportation over this route is impossible to arrive at; so is it im-
possible to estimate what may be the increase of productions stim-
ulated and encouraged as it will be by the completion of this important
work.

Without entering into a minute calculation or estimate of what
will be the advantages this work may derive from local necessity
and patronage, which I am satisfied alone will warrant its construe-

tion, I will notice further advantages that are as intimately connected
with the project as is this locality to which I have just referred.

That section of Sacramento County North ©f this terminus, also
Amador and Calaveras Counties, almost entire, will naturally seek
this point from whence to receive their supplies; like this section of
San Joaquin County, are populous and wealthy and whose demands
for those articles affording up freight would be an item of no incon-
siderable importance to this enterprise.

The population of this section, inclusive of that portion <rf San
Joaquin County referred to, may be safely estimated at 50,000.

Having thus noticed what I conceive to be but an imperfect
sketch of the real local advantages this work may enjoy, I will pass
on and call your attention to the yet hidden wealth of the interior,
to which we must ultimately look in the extension of this important
Railroad enterprise.

Calaveras County, to a very great extent, comprises agricultu-
ral, horticultural and pasturable advantages, as well as inexhaustible
mineral wealth ; which, whilst it is at present the great and para-
mount interest, is but the stepping-stone to her future greatness, in
assisting the development of other interests which time and enter-
prise must and will develop.

The two rivers, Mokelumne; and Stanislaus, which bound the
County on the North and South, present abundant advantages for
the most superior motive powers ; also, the many extensive works
(ditches and flumes) distributing the waters of those streams to any
and every desirable locality throughout the whole county, give
certain and reliable assurances that as the surface mines are exhausted
manufactures of iron, wool, flour, and all other matters that go to
make a people prosperous and rich, will be established and prosecuted
-with profit and success : mining interest will eventually concentrate
tin the hands of capitalists, to which it is slowly but surely tending.

Water, now so generally distributed throughout the county, ere
long must find other investments than in the placer gold fields, or
the income will not meet the expenses of keeping the works in
repair.

Water will and must become much cheaper, when the full capacity

of the ditches will be required to meet the demand for irrigating

and manufacturing purposes along every line; thus adding necessa-

.rily to population.investment of capital, development of now dormant

resources, opening up new and at present unthought of employment,
,and in a word, creating an immense carrying trade where, without
proper facilities of transportation, it must long remain useless and
undeveloped.

Hill sides now unoccupied and in a state of nature, will be trans-
formed into beautiful farms, vineyards and orchards, and wherever
water can be run by artificial means, there you will see a prosperous
home. Those lands that water cannot reach will be used for grazing
purposes, which, to a very considerable extent, is now the case.

Constantly new developments are being made in reference to the
great and inexhaustible mineral wealth of Calaveras County, which
it might not be out of place to briefly notice.

It is fully demonstrated "that over and through the entire surface
of this County, virgin gold is to be obtained, whilst in certain local-
ities deep and apparently inexhaustible quantities exist, which are
worked at great profit to the share-holders; each year new discoveries
are being made.

Throughout the southern portion of the County there is a belt of
virgin gold fields, interspersed with gold bearing quartz lodes, none
of which, however, have been worked with profit, but years hence
they will be. Say for six miles from the San Joaquin County line
East, such is the feature of the country, when indications of other
minerals set in and alternate for a distance of twenty miles East.

From the line North and South spoken of, for a distance of eight
miles, there are what is deemed good indications of iron, cinnabar,
salt and alum ; when a belt of copper sets in, the superficial indica-
tions showing it to be from three to four miles in width. It is gen-
erally known that from the southern end of the lode, and where
copper was first discovered, at and near Copperopolis, large quantities
of metal has been shipped to the Atlantic States and Europe for
smelting, profitable to those engaged in the Avork and affording con-
stant back freight for teams hauling merchandize into that section
of country.

Throughout the width of the County from the Stanislaus to the
Mokelumne River, the lode, wherever it can be superficially traced,
has been located, and at many points is being prospected with
satisfaction to the parties engaged.

At or near Campo Seco the most encouraging results have been
.arrived at. Two claims, the Campo Seco and Lancha Plana, .axe

now raising and shipping metal of extraordinary richness ; other
companies who are prospecting for copper, have the fullest confidence
of success, several having obtained excellent indications.

Campo Seco must be to the northern side of the County, in ref-
erence to copper interest, what Copperopolis is to the southern side;
no one doubting who is familiar with the range, hut a short time
will elapse before the quantity of metal raised for shipment will be
thousands, instead of hundreds of tons as at present.

Immediately after passing the copper belt eastward a belt of lime
stone sets in ; the lime burned from which is of a superior character ;
for the want of cheap transportation, it is only made in such quan-
tities as the local demands require. The lime stone exists in inex-
haustible quantities.

On either side of this lime stone ledge masses of granite and sand
stone of a very superior quality exist which is blocked out and
used in the construction of limekilns only; when with good facilities
of transportation, many men could be employed and thousands of
capital profitably invested.

Throughout and near this region immense banks and ridges of
cobble stones and gravel exist. After passing this belt, silver and
gold bearing quartz, also, asbestos, soap stone, marble and lime stone
alternate far up toward the summit. Approaching the high foot
hills, and from North to South, an extensive belt of pine and cedar
forests set in. There are at present located along the lower edge of
this belt some eighteen saw-mills which have a cutting capacity each
of from two thousand to twenty thousand feet per day ; these mills
supply only the local demand. It is impossible to estimate the
importance of the lumber and carrying trade of this region if assisted
by cheap and speedy transportation. In this connection I will state
from my knowledge of this important timbered range and from
personal observation, that it is of unsurpassed quality, and almost
inexhaustible quantities exist. At the present time, or until the
projection of this work shall reach or closely approach this timbered
belt, an extensive lumber trade may be safely calculated upon over
this road for the interior, from the fact that it can be furnished
cheaper from San Francisco than it can be from the mills now in
operation. But when this Road shall closely approach that belt,
the quantity of sawed lumber, square timber, spars, etc., etc., going

to the Bay would make an item the importance of which would
almost warrant of itself the construction of this work.

The foregoing has reference to advantages comparatively unde-
veloped, but which in future may be made by enterprise valuable to
commerce.

It is well known that the most natural and feasible route connect-
ing San Francisco with Nevada Territory is found through Calaveras
County via the Big Tree Grrove, it is objected that the long level,
presents on account of its distance too much snow to overcome
during the inclement months. I answer that objection by stating
the fact that a franchise has been obtained by a company who are
now engaged upon the work of grading a new and wide road, which
instead of gaining the summit as at present, will by side cuts keep
the road for many miles below its present grade, where the snoAv
will never interfere with travel; gaining the summit and passing it,
having but a short distance of deep snow to contend with ; the
company having determined never to allow the communication
between the Eastern and Western sides of the mountains to be
materially impeded.

In connection with this work and a short distance beyond the
" Grove," a road intersects, making a direct, short and easy commu-
nication with Esmeralda District, thus saving in a trip thence
several days travel in its favor, as compared with the circuitous
course now taken via Placerville. The completion of these works
are fixed facts; those having the matter in hand being energetic
and determined men.

The entire supplies for the Eastern slope of the mountains, and
return freight, may naturally be earned by this route ; from the fact
that the topography of the country is such that under the most
unfavorable circumstances the terminus of this Railroad can be
arrived at irrespective of the stage of water, as the experience of
the past winter has fully demonstrated, and which advantage no
other point of the country enjoys. From the upper terminus of the
Mokelumne City and Woodbridge Railroad via Jenny Lind, Cop-
peropolis, (Salt Spring Valley,) to Murphy's, the main Calaveras is
crossed at the former place ; being the only stream of any import-
ance to intercept travel ; the citizens of that section of the County
are now constructing a free and permanent bridge over the stream
at that place.

From the tipper- terminus- of this road via Camanche, Campo
Seco, Mokelumne Hiil, and Railroad Flat, thence to the Big Tree
Road, no streams otheivthan the- heads of insignificant branches are
to he met with.

Thus it will he perceived thafr aside from local benefits, almost the
entire freight and passenger travel for that rich region East of the
Sierra Nevada mountains may be enjoyed by this route.

It may reasonably be asked,- upon what is- based such apparently
unreasonable calculations ? My answer is-thatefrom San Francisco
to the upper terminus of this^oad, is- but a distance- of 88*ji; miles ;•,
thirteen miles being Railroad, the balance by any description of
vessel competent for navigating the inland waters of the State.

From the upper terminus via Cbpperopolis and Murphys' to the*
Big Tree Grove, 70 miles. From the upper terminus via Campo
Seco and Mokelumne Hill to the "Grove," 58 miles; thus showing a
great saving of distance to be overcome via this- route between San
Francisco and the Grove as compared with the routes now in use.

Again, presuming that what I have stated in reference to the-
Calaveras route over the mountains is not realized, what is the
position of this Road in relation to Placerville I From this terminus-
to Placerville by the present route travelled it is 53 miles ; teamsters-
who are constantly arriving at and departing from this point, concur,
in the statement that it is by nature of a superior character and
easy grade. Therefore if via Placerville the entire trade should,
pass (which cannot be the case,) the terminus of this Road must be
the point from whence they will continually receive their supplies,
and with which they must connect by Railroad, because the nature-
of the land and the convergence of ridges tend to this point ; past
experience has shown that from every direction Woodbridge is-
approachable by superior roads at all seasons and under all circum-
stances.

When Ave extend our imaginations South and East of this terminus
it becomes almost impossible to estimate with any certainty the
carrying trade for that immense region which will by nature be
positively tributary to this Road, and which only proposes to be a
connecting link over a route prepared by nature, and from Avhence
an indefinite territory may be supplied, and from which may radiate
many similar enterprises when the country becomes more populous
and their wants demand such facilities..

lo-
in speaking particularly of the undeveloped resources of Calaveres
County I do so from the fact of being more intimately acquainted
with the same, and knowing from personal observation what I have
stated; not relying upon information derived frem promiscuous
sources.

I have not the slighest doubt and to a certain extent know, that
what is asserted of Calaveras County will hold good as a general
thing of Amador and Tuolumne, which three Counties alone of the
interior, comprise a large territory, are populous and wealthy, are
being rapidly developed, and when this work is completed will
receive their supplies over it and transport by it such back freight
as they may have.

Those Counties lying East and South of this terminus, Mono,
Tulare, Fresno, Mariposa, and parts of Merced, Stanislaus and San
Joaquin, which enjoy equal advantages naturally with the most
favored portions of the State, will from necessity, as it will be to.
their interest, patronise this Road when it shall be in complete
working order.

It has been my purpose merely to state what this Road may enjoy
when completed, without any desire to make invidious comparisons..
I wish, however, by the appended table of distances from San
Francisco via this terminus to the two important points on the routes
of travel connecting Nevada Territory with this State, to show that
from its position it has much in its favor in reference to distance, as-
compared with the routes of travel as at present in use ,• presuming
that all persons who will take the trouble to investigate and compare
will at once observe the advantages I claim for this great Central
route, which ultimately must connect the Pacific Coast by the most
direct and feasible route with Nevada Territory and the Atlantic
States.

The following is a correct table of distances, showing the advan-
tages of this route as against any other now travelled connecting
San Francisco with Nevada Terrritory, also the entire country
North, South and East, inclusive of Sacramento and El Dorado
Counties.

In this connection I will state that of the stock or capital neces-
sary for the completion of the Road, two hundred and ten thousand
dollars has already been subscribed, and 10 per cent of that amount
deposited, subject to the demands of the Company when incorpora-

ted and stock issued ; it is proposed without further delay to com-
mence the work.

The Charter granted by the State Legislature and approved by
the Governor, March 28, 1862, for this Road, specifies that it shall
be commenced within four months and completed within three years,
the line of Road extending from Mokelumne City to Woodbridge..

I would recommend the line of Road as shown on map, one mile
South of Mokelumne City, and the immediate construction of the
branch to Sharp's ranch, on the Sacramento River, as estimated for,
and would further recommend a branch off to Mokelumne City ;
this point occupying an important position on the Mokelumne
River, being the center of a rich agricultural district, also the depot
and entrepot for the most extensive gardening operations of this or
any other portions of the State.

The following table is given with a reference to a showing from
figures upon what is based the assertion that this work may imme-
diately upon its completion enjoy the carrying trade for the region
lying East of the Sierra Nevada mountains, by stage and team
connecting with its upper terminus, or the extension of this road to |
the lower foot hills.

TABLE OF DISTANCES VIA. THIS ROUTE.

Miles. Miles .

San Francisco to Sacramento City, 110

Sacramento City to Placerville, 49 159

San Francisco to Benicia, 30

Benicia to Rio Vista, 26

Rio Vista to Sharp's, or lower terminus of the Railroad, 12$

Lower terminus to Woodbridge, or upper terminus of the Railroad,.. 13

Woodbridge to Placerville via. lone Valley, 53 134$

Distance in favor of route via. Woodbridge, 24$

San Francisco to Sacramento 110

Sacramento to Jackson, (County Seat of Amador,).... 50 160

San Francisco to Woodbridge, 81$

Woodbridge to Jackson, 34 115$

Distance in favor of the route via. Woodbridge, 44$

San Francisco to Stockton, 130

Stockton to Knights' Ferry, Stanislaus River, 38 168

San Francisco to Woodbridge, 81$

Woodbridge to Knights' Ferry, 42 123$

Distance in favor of route via. Woodbridge 44$

San Francisco to Stockton, 130

Stockton to Copperopolis, via. Jenny Lind 35 165

San Francisco to Woodbridge, 81$

Woodbridge to Copperopolis, via. Jenny Lind, 30 111$

Distance in favor of route via. Woodbridge; 53$

San Francisco to Stockton 130

Stockton to Big Trees, via. Salt Spring Valley,... 70 200

San Francisco to Woodbridge, 81*

Woodbridge to Big Trees, via. Salt Spring Valley, 65 146*

Distance in favor of route via. Woodbridge, 53£

San Francisco to Stockton, 130

Stockton to Campo Seco, via. Camanche, 31 161

San Francisco to Woodbridge, 81i

Woodbridge to Campo Seco, via. Camanche, 25 106*

Distance in favor of route via. Woodbridge, 54*

San Francisco to Stockton, 130

Stockton to Big Tree Grove, or West Point, via. Mokelumne Hill,.. 62 192

San Francisco to Woodbridge, 81£

. Woodbridge to Big Tree Grove, or West Point, via. Mokelumne Hill, 58 139*

Distance in favor of route via. Woodbridge, 52J

RECAPITULATION.

Miles.

San Francisco via. Sacramento City to Placerville, 159

" " " Woodbridge to Placerville, 134*,

" " " Sacramento to Jackson 160

" •' " Woodbridge to Jackson, • 115*

" " " Stockton and Salt Spring Valley to Big Tree Grove, 200

" •' " Woodbridge and Salt Spring Valley to Big Tree Grove, 146*

" " " Stockton, Mokelumne Hill, Railroad Flat, or West Point,

to Big Tree Road, 192

" " " Woodbridge, Mokelumne Hill, Railroad Flat, or West

Point, to Big Tree Road, 139£

" " " Stockton and Jenny Lind to Copperopolis, ] 165

" " " Woodbridge and Jenny Lind to Copperopolis, Ill*

" " " Stockton and Camanche to Campo Seco, 161

': " '• Woodbridge and Camanche to Campo Seco 105£

" " " Stockton to Knights' Ferry, on the Stanislaus River, 168

" " " Woodbridge to Knights' Ferry, on the Stanislaus River,. ...115*

Here I will notice the fact that upon the completion of this road
the connection by steamers at its lower terminus will enable passen-
gers to leave San Francisco in the morning and on the same day
arrive by stage at any point of the interior, including Placerville to
the North, and Sonora on the East. It -will avoid the necessity as at
present of lying over or making a night travel upon the inland waters;
affording a passage from San Francisco throughout Central Califor-
nia to any given point, a pleasant transit by day. This advantage
is gained not alone from the open and unobstructed navigation from
San Francisco to the lower terminus, but thence to "Woodbridge by
Railroad, thirteen miles to high land, from and to which point,
under the most unfavorable circumstances of inclement weather its
approaches are perfect, and have never been interrupted.

Thus from necessity and interest almost the entire carrying trade
and passenger travel for this vast region must concentrate at the
upper terminus of this Road.

The results in point of revenue to this Road are positively incal-
culable ; no one being able to estimate with positive correctness its

present or increasing importance ; in connection with the comple-
tion of this Road, I may, however, with safety estimate, taking into
consideration the advantage shown by figures, the central position
this terminus occupies, and by this line of travel the distance saved
to all points North and West in Central California, as also South
and East indefinitely, including Nevada Territory, it will not be
deemed extravagant to claim that one hundred passengers per day
will pass over this road.

The immediate proximity of this Road to the best natural Road
across the Sierra Nevada, warrants me in asserting that over this
route may be expected to pass the bulk of trade for Nevada Terri-
tory; Esmeralda and Mono districts cannot avoid it. Admitting
this, and in connection with the wants of the middle section of
California, I claim for this route one hundred tons up freight per day.
Mail and Express matter for this region, from the shortness of
the route connecting the interior, and consequent dispatch given,
must be carried this way.

A subject of no little importance, and from whence this Road
will derive a considerable revenue, will be the carrying of fish ;
not alone for the San Erancisco but interior markets, and which
may be regarded as one of the paying items of freight.

Without estimating quantity I feel warranted in the assertion
that the revenue derivable from down freights on wood, coal, timber,
hay, grain and vegetables, also live stock, will much more than
cover all the expenses connected with the management and conduct
of this enterprise.

The revenue alone derivable from up freights specified, which
comprise but a few of the many articles for transportation, but
possibly the most important to be offered, may be named as
follows :

100 passengers per day, at $1 each, $ 100 00

100 tons of freight, at $1 per ton, f. 100 00

Mail and Express matter per day, 20 00

From fisheries perday, ; 20 00

Total, $ 240 00

From these items alone, receipts per day, $ 240 00

Equal per annum to $87,600 00

Claiming that the down freights will fully or more than meet all
expenses of the Road, it will be seen by this showing that a dividend
per annum upon the capital required, as per estimate, ($362,978 24,)
may be declared of 24 per cent.; leaving a margin.

So well is it known that the construction of such works as is here
proposed open up new avenues of trade, develop the resources of
the country through which they may pass, and in a word, has a
tendency to so greatly increase the travel and general interests of
the section, that it would appear unnecessary to draw the attention
of those seeking investments, or the community at large to this
important fact. I propose however to offer in connection with this
Report statistics derived from the report of the Chief Engineer of
the Pacific and Atlantic Railroad, which refers to results obtained
in Europe as well as the United States.

¥m, J. Lewis, Chief Engineer, says :

It is difficult to estimate the increase in the number of passengers
and amount of freight which will be created by the construction of
a Railroad. The natural progress of population and business is so
rapid in the United States, that it is impossible to ascertain what
proportion of the increased traffic which has followed the construc-
tion of Railroads, was a direct consequence of that fact and what
was due to extraneous causes. A glance at the changes which have
been brought about in Europe by the construction of Railroads,
will serve to illustrate this point. Baron Charles Dupin, in his
" Report on the Paris and Orleans Railway," makes the following
statements :

" Experience has proved, both in France and abroad, that in a
short space of time the facility, expedition, and economy afforded
by railways more than doubles the number of passengers, and the
quantity of merchandise.

" In order to support such statements, we will quote the following
facts relative to the railways of Belgium, England and Scotland, in
positions of extreme difference, and giving rise to a variation in the
returns which far exceded all anticipation :

* Comparison of the number of travelers conveyed daily
throughout a whole or a portion of the line.

railways.

Manchester and Liverpool,
Stockton and Darlington,
Newcastle and Carlisle,
Arbroath and Forfar,
Brussels and Antwerp,

Liverpool and Manchester,
Stockton and Darlington,
Newcastle and Carlisle,
Arbroath and Forfar,
Brussels and Antwerp,

No. of Pass, before
the establishment.

No. of Pass, after
the establishment.

400

130

200

1,620
630
500
200

3,000

SEI
All

<JGERS
jWAY.

BY THE

ESTABLISH-

300
380
455
900
1,400

per

cent.

" Thus, even taking as a criterion the road on which the propor-
tional increase is least of all, we still find that the number of pas-
sengers will be not only 100 but 300 per cent. The transport of
merchandise will experience a similarly rapid increase."

Edward Teisserence, an agent of the French government, in an
official communication in relation to English railways, says :

" The Darlington Railway has produced, by its low rates of
passage and freight, a complete revolution in the region of country
which it traverses. It has increased the value of land 100 or 200
per cent. By these low rates, the freight estimated at 80,000 tons,
has been increased to 640,000 tons. The passengers estimated at
4,000 have been increased to 200,000."

The following extract on the influence of railways in developing
the resources of a country, is taken from the second Report of the
Irish Railway Commissioners :

" On the Newcastle and Carlisle road, prior to the railway, the
whole number of persons the public coaches were licensed to carry
in a week were 343, or both ways, 686. Now, the average daily
number of passengers by railway for the whole length, viz : 61.8
miles, is 228, or 1,596 per week.

" The number of passengers on the Dundee and Newtyle line
exceeds at this time 50,000 annually ; the estimated number of per-
sons who performed the same journey previous to the opening of
the railway having been 4,000.

" Previous to* the opening of a railway between Liverpool and
Manchester, there were about 400 passengers per day, or 146,000
per year, travelling between these places by coaches, whereas the
prasent number by railway alone, exceeds 500,000.

" In foreign countries the results arising from the same cause, are
equally, if not more striking. The number of persons who usually
passed between Brussels and Antwerp, was 75,000 in the year; but
since the railroad has been opened from the former place to Malines,
it has increased to 500,000 ; and since it was carried through to
Antwerp, the number has exceeded a million. The opening of a
branch from Malines to. Termonde appears to have added 200,000
to the latter number, so that the passenger traffic of that railroad
superceding a road traffic of only 75,000 persons, now amounts to
1,200,000."

The following tabular statement of several railroads in Massa-
chusetts shows the estimated number of passengers before these
roads were built, and the number transported upon them during the
year 1848 :

NAME OF ROAD. Estimated No. of Pa??. No. of Passengers

before opened. carried in 1846 .

Boston and Worcester, 23,500 807,143

Boston and Lowell 37,400 525,764

Fitehburg 71,790 745,825

Eastern 121.700 1,021,160

Boston and Maine, J, 057, 569

Boston and Providence, 569,127

Fall River, 241,107

4,967,704
Thus showing to all enquiring and reflecting minds that in my
estimate in connection with this work no approximate has been
arrived at, indicating to what importance the future of this Road
may arrive. My calculations upon business and returns are based
entirely upon the local and interior wants as evidenced by the
present and past, imperfect and at times impossible as the communi-
cation has been ; but, by the completion of this Road so many nat-
ural difficulties will be overcome, that it must for all future time be
the positive channel connecting San Francisco with territory suffi-
cient for an empire of no small magnitude.

In conclusion I offer the following recapitulation :

Total estimated cost of Road 13 miles, inclusive of rooling stock, $362,978 64

Total estimated amount receipts of Road over all contingent expenses, 87,800 00

Respectfully submitted,

H. R. LEONARD,

Engineer Mokelumne City and Woodbridge Railroad.

Woodbridge, June 24th., 1862.

REPORT

ON THE

iatktm anptr Coperoplis ^ailroafo,

LOCATION, COST OF CONSTRUCTION,

RESOURCES.

BY WM. S. WATSON, C. E.

t * 0

Stockton, California, May 20th, 1866.

SAN FRANCISCO:

PRINTED BY TOWNE AND BACON.

1866.

4 •

OFFICEE8

OF THE

President.
E. S. HOLDEN.

Vice President.
H. H. HEWLETT,

Treasurer.

C. T. HEADER.

Secretary.

GEORGE GRAY.

Chief Engineer.
W. S. WATSON.

€. T. MEADER,
E. S. HOLDEN,

T. G. PHELPS,

Directors.
AUSTIN SPERRY, W. S. McKEE,
J. R. ANTHONY,
GEORGE GRAY,

Stockton.

H. H. HEWLETT,

San Francisco.

W. A. DANA,

Contractors.

GEORGE D. NAGLE and RICHARD IVERS,

San Eeancisco.

REPORT.

To the President and Directors of the Stockton and Cojyperojjolis
Railroad Company :

Gentlemen : — In order to determine whether or not any en-
terprise, involving the expenditure of large amounts of money, is
worthy the attention of capital, it hecomes necessary to establish
from reliable data, the following facts :

1st. Is the enterprise feasible ?

2nd. What will it cost?

3d. Will it pay?

These three propositions must be considered as the basis of all
financial operations, of whatever magnitude, and when once satis-
factorily established from reliable data, the main question may be
affirmatively answered.

It is as well with a view to establish in a satisfactory manner the
foregoing propositions, as regards the Stockton and Copperopolis
Railroad, as to lay before you the condition and prospects of your
road, that I beg leave to present the following report of its location,
cost of construction, and resources.

LOCATION.

One of the most important considerations with which a railroad
company has to deal, is that of a judicious location ; and amongst
the leading requirements necessary for such a location, is^ that most
important one/of having the road reach its sources of revenue in
the shortest possible distance, looking at the same time/for such
way trade and travel as is most available.

Having ascertained and established the most direct and practi-
cable line between the points sought to be connected, it becomes
the duty of the Engineer to carefully examine the general route
chosen, for a distance of one or two miles on each side ; so that
the road, when finally located, shall be, not only on the shortest
practicable line, as to alignment, but also on a line, the contour
of which (as to grades) shall present the most uniform surface
the country affords, in order that the graduation, bridging, and
other contingencies of construction, may be reduced to a minimum
cost.

It is believed that these important requirements have been at-
tained in the location of the first division of twenty miles of your
road. Commencing at the foot of Center street, in the City of
Stockton, the line takes the center of Webber avenue, to the east
line of East street, a distance of 5,400 feet. Thence, in a direct
line, a distance of 750 feet ; thence curving to the left, a distance
of GOO feet, on a radius of 2,865 feet (or 2° curve); thence tan-
gent for 950 feet ; thence, curving to the right, a distance of 425
feet, on a radius of 2,865 feet, to the center of subdivisions 44,
55, 65, lb, and 85 of the Webber grant, a distance of 20,552
feet — nearly four miles ; thence, curving through 17°80' to the
right, on a radius of 2,865 feet, a distance of 900 feet, thence, tan-
gent, through subdivisions 85 and 95, of the Webber grant, to the
east line thereof. The line then takes the center or quarter line
of section 36, township 2 north, range 8 east ; sections 31, 82,
33, 34, 35 of township 2 west", range 10 east, Mount Diablo
meridian, and continues tangent to station 1,300, a total distance
of 130,000 feet ; having a total alignment of 1,928 feet, of T
curve, and 128,072 feet of tangent, making 24 miles, 3,280 feet.

It will be seen that the line, as indicated above, lies nearly mid-
way between the Mokelumne Hill road and the Sonora and Knight's
Ferry road. While the terminus of this division will be ten miles
south from Jenny Lind, and seventeen miles north from Knight's
Ferry, and but one-half mile north of a due east line drawn from
the City of Stockton to Copperopolis, the eastern terminus.

Therefore, so far as one of the necessary elements of a correct
Railroad location is concerned, that of being direct, the loca-
tion chosen is the best that can be found between the limits re-
ferred to.

As to cost of graduation, bridging, etc., I am satisfied that no
more favorable line can be developed between the Mokelumne Hill
and Sonora road than the one adopted for the first division. The
cuttings are light, as will be seen from accompanying profile. The
embankments are, in most places, not over two and three tenths feet
in height, while there is but one stream to cross (the Mormon slough)
at station 554, over which the road is carried on trestle bents,
eleven in number, fifteen feet spans each, and twelve feet high.

The country, in some places, is liable to periodical overflow, from
the Calaveras river, but of short duration, and with little current.
It is confidently believed that the embankments, although light in
these places, are sufficiently relieved by trestle bents to render such
overflow entirely harmless.

The country through which this division of your road runs is a
thickly settled agricultural district, which will have, at all times of
the year, an available outlet, the products of which will contribute
no small item to the resources thereof. (See statistics, way travel,
pages 23 and 25.)

CITY OF STOCKTON.

The western terminus of your road is at tide water, at the City
of Stockton, one hundred and twenty miles from San Fran-
cisco by steamboat navigation ; fifty miles south of Sacramento,
and twenty-five miles west of the foot hills ; has the same relative
position to the Southern mines, as Sacramento has to the North-
ern mines, of the State ; has a population of about 5,000, with a
distributing area, for merchandise, of 25,949 square miles. To
this point all the imported supplies are shipped from San Fran-
cisco, and distributed by teams to the mountain counties east and
south. Of this distribution of imported freight, your road must
necessarily, for twenty-one miles, command the whole ; as all sup-
plies, from Calaveras County on the north, and Tulare on the
south, must pass over your road for at least that distance ; which,
according to the City Collector's Report, for 1864, amounted to
46,000 tons, and forty passengers per day to the mountains. (See
table, page 23.)

The counties through which the road will run, commencing as
before mentioned, at the foot of Center street, in the City of Stock-
ton, are the eastern portion of San Joaquin County, the northern

portion of Stanislaus ; entering Calaveras County near the center
of its western line ; thence to Copperopolis, a mining town in this
county, built on the copper belt, having about 1,500 inhabitants.
The distance from the initial point to the eastern terminus has
not yet been definitely ascertained, as a final location has only
been made for twenty-one miles from Stockton, leaving the eastern
division not finally located. From the preliminary surveys already
made, the length of this division cannot exceed nineteen miles, mak-
ing the total distance between the termini, forty miles.

SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY.

The sectional area of San Joaquin County is 1,452 square miles —
929,280 acres — about one-third of which is agricultural, the rest
foot hills and tule lands. The agricultural products of this county,
in 1864, amounted to $4,445, 058. The sectional area of San Joa-
quin, tributary to your road, will be about 216 square miles — 138,240
acres — which comprises the most productive part of the San Joa-
quin Valley, yielding, as per Assessor's Report of 1864, 16,586
tons of agricultural supplies.

The assessed valuation, in 1865, was 84,986,615. The popula-
tion, in 1860— 9,435.

CALAVERAS COUNTY.

The County of Calaveras, laying to the east of San Joaquin and
Stanislaus, is materially a mountain and mining county — bounded
by the Mokelumne River on the north, the Stanislaus River on the
south, the foot hills on the west, and the summit of the sierras on
the east. Some of the richest gold mines in California are worked
in this county, such as Sutter Creek, Carson Hill, etc. The exten-
sive copper belt developed at Copperopolis extends entirely through
this county, on a nearly northwest and southeast course, crossing
the Stanislaus River at or near Knight's Ferry. It has been traced,
and occasional claims opened and worked, as far south as the Chow-
chilla, a distance of fifty-six miles, which will be noticed under the
head of " Mariposa County." Going north, the belt crosses the Cala-
veras below Taylor's Bar, thence crossing the Mokelumne River
near Campo Seco, where extensive and paying mines are being
worked, thence crossing Amador County near lone Valley, it is
supposed to cross the American River at or near Salmon Falls.

The sectional area of this county is 1,140 square miles, with but
ninety-eight square miles, or 62,763 acres, of cultivated land. The
Assessor's valuation of the county is 82,004,430. The popula-
tion, 16,299 in 1860, is mostly engaged in mining pursuits, and
are large buyers of imported products and merchandise, all of
which must pass over the Stockton and Copperopolis Railroad. Aside
from the gold and copper of this county, there are extensive quar-
ries of marble and granite of very superior quality, which cannot
be worked at the present rates of transportation. Her upper range
of mountains are covered by a dense forest of pine and oak, em-
bracing an area of about three hundred square miles, which can
probably be transported to the San Francisco market for twenty-
five per cent, less than an equal quality of timber can be procured
from any other source on this coast. In this county is located the
Big Trees, or " Mammoth Grove," which, as a cuiiosity, attracts
thousands of tourists every year, and as a natural production, it
excites the wonder and admiration of every visitor.

The up freights for the county will amount to 15,640 tons per
annum, and down freights, including copper ores, 65,400 tons per
annum ; total, 71,040 tons.

STANISLAUS COUNTY.
Your road will cross the northern part of this county for six
miles, in which the terminus of the first division will be located.
This county is mostly agricultural land, embracing a sectional area
of 1 ,228 square miles, a population of 2,245, in 1860, and an assessed
valuation of $888,419. The principal towns are Knight's Ferry,
the county seat, situated on the Stanislaus River, where it
debouches on the main San Joaquin Valley, and Lagrange. The
business of this county is mostly centered in these towns. In
Knight's Ferry there are also quarries of sandstone, which will, on
the completion of the road, form an important item of transporta-
tion to tide water.

By reference to tables of statistics, it will be seen that the
business centering at Knight's Ferry will form a large item of
receipts, and which will reach your road at the junction twenty-one
miles from Stockton. (See table of southern counties on page 26.)

The freighting business of this county, from details taken at each
of the largest stores, amounts to 4,444J tons.

TUOLUMNE COUNTY.

Your road will not touch this county, but for all practical pur-
poses will command its trade and travel, Copperopolis being fifteen
miles from Sonora, and from Knight's Ferry it is about two miles
to the west line of this county. The County of Tuolumne is one
of the oldest mining counties in the State, from which more
gold has probably been extracted than from any equal area of Cali-
fornia. Some of the richest mines in the State are located here,
and from the recent impetus given to prospecting for quartz mines,
there is no doubt that Tuolumne will again take the prominent posi-
tion she held in years past. There is as little doubt of the richness
of her mines, if once properly developed, as there is of their known
number and extent.

The sectional area of Tuolumne is 1,430 square miles, bounded
by the Stanislaus River on the north, and the ridge between the
Merced and Tuolumne Rivers on the south, on the west by the foot
hills, and the east by the sierras. The character of the country is,
of course, mountainous, forming the spurs of the main ridges, where
they descend into the valley to the west. Her population, in 1860,
was 16,229. The assessed valuation, in 1865, was $1,536,258.
As in Calaveras, the people are mostly engaged in mining. One
of the most extensive and valuable marble quarries to be found on
this coast, pronounced equal to the best Italian, has been opened
at Columbia, in this county, which, with her extensive forests of
pine, and other wood, must, in a very few years, produce a freight
list for your road, the amount of which it is impossible to antici-
pate. The present freights for this county are principally up,- sup-
ply freights amounting to 6,000 tons per year ; while there will be
shipped, of Tuolumne County freights, to Big Oak Flat, Chinese
Camp, Don Pedros Bar, and the Garrotes, 950 tons ; total up
freights, 6,950 tons. And of down freights — consisting of build-
ing materials, lumber and ores — not less than 1,320 tons. Total,
8,270 tons.

MARIPOSA COUNTY.

This county lays to the south of Tuolumne, and is, like Tuol-
umne, a mining county, with a sectional area of 1,884 square
miles, and a population of 6,243. The assessed valuation of this

county, in 1885, was 11,287,370. In this county are the rich gold
mines of Bear Yalley, the copper mines of Hunter's Valley, Chow-
chilla, and others, now being developed. There is also, as in the
previously mentioned counties, large forests of pine and other
woods suitable for mechanical purposes, which will be available
with cheap transportation. From the nature of the country, and
the pursuits of the inhabitants, Mariposa imports, of merchandise,
4,240 tons per annum, which, with an increase of population to the
standard of Nevada County, and the consequent development of
her vast resources, would be quadrupled in a very short time.

The down freights from this county, consisting of copper ores,
wool, hides, etc., amounts to 9,211 tons annually.

The principal points of shipping are Hornitas, Princetown, Agua
Frio, Mariposa, Coulterville, and Bear Valley.

In this county are located the Yosemite Falls, formed by the
branches of the Merced River in its descent from the main ridge of
the sierras to the foot hills ; these falls, world wide in their reputa-
tion, attract the special attention of tourists, and no one who ever
visits California, should fail to see this wonderful freak of nature.
The travel to the falls averages not less than one thousand persons
annually, and is constantly increasing.

At Hunter's Valley has also been discovered rich copper mines ;
this place ,is five miles from Bear Valley, eight miles from Merced
Falls, and twenty-nine miles south from Knight's Ferry, along the
foot hills.

There was shipped from these mines last year, about five hund-
red tons copper ore.
Total freights :

Up freights 4,239 tons.

Down freights 920 "

Total 5,159 tons.

MERGED COUNTY.

West of Mariposa County lays Merced, mostly an agricultural
county, the central and western portion of which has to some ex-
tent an outlet on the San Joaquin River. The eastern portion will,
however, be tributary to your road. The sectional area of the

county is 1,384 square miles. Population, 1,141, in 1860 ; as-
sessed valuation, 816,318 dollars.

The principal shipping points for up freight are Merced Falls
and Snellingville, six miles below. Here, as well as at Knight's
Ferry and Lagrange, on the Tuokimne, is a large amount of water
power, capable of being used at little expense, and which will at
no distant day be turned to good account. .

The freighting business of this county amounts to five hundred
and sixty-two tons.

FRESNO COUNTY.

This county, to the south of Mariposa and Merced, in sectional
area, is one of the largest counties in the State, reaching from the
coast range to the eastern boundaries of the State, containing
9,240 square miles ; of this about 444,800 acres are agricultural
lands of superior quality. The population of Fresno, in 1860, was
4,605 and assessed valuation $811,716, in 1865.

The copper mines, discovered in this county within the past year,
in the Hamilton district, near the Chowchilla river, are no doubt
extensive. The lead is clearly defined for ten miles, with crop-
pings of great richness. The shipments of copper from this dis-
trict, will, it is believed, in two years rival that from Copperopolis.
At present the shipments are light, as the cost of transportation
to San Francisco is eighty dollars per ton, which makes the reduc-
tion of the ores a necessity before leaving the mine.

The down freight from this county, principally from the Chow-
chilla mines, are 1,800 tons. Two other mines are shipping by way
of the San Joaquin, one hundred and twenty tons per month,
which will come to Knight's Ferry ; the distance is fifty-four miles.

The up freights to Fort Miller are eight hundred and seventy
five tons per annum.

The total freights, to and from this county, will amount to 2,675
tons.

TULARE COUNTY.

The County of Tulare, to the south of Fresno, contains a popu-
lation of 4,638 ; an assessed valuation of 11,306,380 ; agricultural
products, for 1865, amounting to $616,890 ; a sectional area of
7,181 square miles, of which about 200,604 acres are good agri-

cultural lands, the rest mountain and tule lands. There are rich
gold veins in this county, which are now. being developed, and
which will increase the present freights to a large amount. The
freights of last year were as follows :

Up Freights 2,750 tons.

Down Freights 409 tons.

Total 3,159 tons.

There is no outlet for the northern portion of this county but by
way of Knight's Ferry, and thence by the Stockton and Copper-
opolis Railroad to Stockton.

ALPINE COUNTY.

The County of Alpine lays on the east of Amador and Cala-
veras. The population has been estimated (in the absence of any
census, the county being organized since 1860) at 2,450 ; the
assessed valuation, as reported in 1865, was $480,574. Within
the boundaries of this county are the mining districts of Silver
Mountain, Monitor, Mogul, etc. The mines worked here are silver
and gold, principally the former. It is peculiarly the Alps of Cali-
fornia, being mostly over 6,000 feet above tide water, and embrac-
ing some of the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada range.

The freight business of this county I have estimated at 590 tons,
up freight, principally merchandise and machinery. This county is
reached by the Copperopolis and Big Tree Turnpike. The freights
I have included in Calaveras returns.

MONO COUNTY.

This county lays beyond the summit of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, and east of Tuolumne, Mariposa, and Fresno. The
population of this county has, like Alpine, been estimated (as it
was organized since the census of 1860) at 1,100. The assessed
value thereof, in 1865, was $135,874. It contains Lake Mono,
and the large Valley of Owen's River and Lake ; is said to contain
gold and silver, but from the great distance from any means of
transportation, and business center, is slow of development. There

■

has, however, been a good turnpike built through the County of
Tuolumne, reaching the valley at Stockton, from which the people
must draw their supplies.

I have estimated the freight of this county at 360 tons per
annum, and included it in the Tuolumne returns.

KERN AND INYO COUNTIES.

The two Counties of Kern and Inyo are also on the eastern slope
of the Sierra Nevadas ; were organized by the Legislature of
1866 from territory previously included in Mariposa, Fresno, Tulare,
and Los Angeles ; the population, travel, and business of these new
counties are included in the counties of which they formed a part.
There is little doubt that, from their organization into separate
political communities, the population and business of this region
will be doubled within the next two or three years. The four
trans-mountain counties — Alpine, Mono, Kern, and Inyo — are
formed into a separate Judicial District. The whole of these coun-
ties, as will be seen hereafter, have an area of 25,949 square miles,
with a population of 64,385, or 2.48 per square mile ; while the
whole population of California is distributed at the ratio of 2.01 per
square mile. In the State of Massachusetts the number of inhabit-
ants per square mile is 157.83, and in the whole New England
States the number of inhabitants is 50.47 per square mile. It is
claimed, for these counties, that, with their genial climate, undevel-
oped resources, the fertility of their virgin soil, and abundance of
water power for mechanical purposes — as compared with the inhos-
pitable climate and sterile soil of New England — the ratio of popu-
lation should equal, if not far exceed that of the latter, or even of
the Middle States of the Union, in a very few years.

The agricultural lands of these counties — embracing an area of
not less than 2,700 square miles — are as productive as any lands
in the United States, yielding an average of twenty-five bushels per
acre of all kinds of grain products. The foot hills, to an elevation
of 1,500 feet above tide water, embrace an area of not less than
1,200 square miles — one-third of which is unsurpassed as a wine-
growing country. The mountains are rich in mineral productions,
and the whole territory offers the greatest inducement to the
crowded labor of the older agricultural States, which are so far

filled up as to deprive the inhabitants of that general occupation
and allotment of areas, necessary to the prosperity of a rural popu-
lation.

FEASIBILITY AND COST OF CONSTRUCTION.

The construction and profitable operation of a railroad from
Stockton to Copperopolis I propose to show, in the following pages,
to be not only entirely feasible, but for the length of road proposed,
and character of country traversed, to possess facilities for con-
struction and inducements for investment, hardly to be found in
any road of the same length in the United States.

As to the construction and successful operation of a railroad from
Stockton to Copperopolis, no one can entertain the least doubt. It
is therefore more for the purpose of comparison, than evidence, that
the following operations on other roads are introduced in this report.

The alignment for twenty-one miles is practically straight, there
being only one-third of a mile of two degree curve, and twenty and
two-third miles straight line on the first division.

Of the remaining nineteen miles, it is estimated that about one-
half will be curves, varying from one degree, of 5,730 feet, to ten
degrees, of 573 feet, radius, which will be the maximum of curva-
ture.

The maximum gradients established on the western division, now
under construction,^ fifty-two feet per mile ; this grade will be
passed over by an ordinary engine of fifteen tons, with a load of
100 tons, at twenty miles per hour.

The maximum grades of the upper division will not be over ninety-
eight feet per mile, and will be traversed by a twenty-two ton locomo-
tive, on four drivers, with a load of 100 tons, in from fifteen to
twenty miles per hour. Should it appear on a final location that a
higher maximum can be adopted with economy to construction,
grades ol 105 feet per mile can, with entire safety, be introduced.

GRADES.

The maximum grades of your road will be considerably less
than those established on the Central Pacific Railroad, of California.

On the first division they are necessarily light, as at the termi-
nus at Junction, twenty-one miles from Stockton, the elevation

reached is 246.7 feet. By reference to the table of grades for the
the first division, it will be seen that the maximum grade is fifty-
two feet per mile, descending in the direction of the movement of
the heavy freight business.

From the eastern end of the first division to Copperopolis heavier
grades will be encountered, The location of Copperopolis being
east of the first, or Salt Spring Valley range of hills, at the south-
eastern end of which the town is located, the road will cross this
range at an elevation of about 1,200 feet above Stockton, and 954
feet above the junction ; this ascent will be made in ten miles, on
an average grade of ninety-five feet per mile, if on a final location
such a grade should be deemed advisable.

In order to cross the Salt Spring Valley range of mountains, we
have the choice of three routes — one at McCarty's Pass, one at or
near the location of the old Burn's Ferry Road, and one at Shep-
ard's Reservoir. From the, as yet, imperfect explorations that have '
been made, it is impossible to determine the most feasible. I am
inclined to think, however, the most northerly pass will be found to
be not only the easiest of access, but considerably lower ; and
although a location on this route will involve a necessarily longer
line, yet, I believe, the additional distance will be compensated by
the increased revenue arising from this location approaching more
nearly the copper district, lying between the Calaveras and Mokel-
umne Rivers.

If the northern pass should be found to be the most available,
the line will enter the Salt Spring Valley near its northwestern
extremity, and will practically follow the copper belt to Copperop-
olis ; the maximum grade of this section of nine miles will not
exceed thirty feet per mile ; the elevation of Copperopolis is 936
feet above tide water. At the eastern end of the first section,
twenty-one miles from Stockton, as before intimated, a terminus will
be made, from which it will be found necessary to build a line to
Knight's Ferry, a distance from this point of seventeen miles.

By the construction of this seventeen miles of road the entire
travel, as far south as Fort Tejon would be secured ; the business of
the country south of Knight's Ferry calls for this junction to be
made, as will more clearly appear from statistics collected and com-
piled by S. M. Gallup, Esq., Lagrange, to whom I am indebted for
valuable information of that country. (See tables.)

The people of Stanislaus, by an act of the Legislature, are
authorized to subscribe to the stock of the Stockton and Copperopo-
lis Railroad, and will, I am informed, aside from this subsidy, sub-
scribe liberally to this part of your road. In view of an early com-
mencement of this important feeder, I would recommend that a
survey be made from the Junction to Knight's Ferry at as early a
day as possible.

While on the subject of grades I will call your attention to some
of the leading railroads in the United States, whose operations are
daily carried on over grades much higher than any that will be
found necessary to establish on the Stockton and Copperopolis Rail-
road, on the Central Pacific Railroad of California, located by the
late Theo. D. Judah, Esq., Chief Engineer, and now under success-
ful operation nearly sixty miles eastwardly from Sacramento. We
find planes of from one to eight miles in succession, of 105 feet per
mile grade, operated daily with engines of thirty tons and under, at
the rate of twenty-five miles per hour.

-The Hon. Leland Stanford, President of that road, in his report
to the President of the United States, dated October 10th, 1865,

" The highest grade used on the Central Pacific Railroad is 105
feet per mile, of which there are thirteen and one-half miles on the
present completed line. (Sacramento to Clipper Gap — forty-five
miles.) We find no difficulty in operating this portion of the road,
running our regular passenger trains thereon at twenty-five miles
per hour, and freight trains twelve miles per hour. A greater
speed could be obtained, but so far, it has been found unnecessary."

The freight trains mentioned here are, of course, freight going east,
or ascending. On the Pennsylvania Central Railroad are gradients
of ninety-five feet, for nine and three-fourths miles in succession,
over which passenger and freight trains pass at the rate of twenty-
four miles per hour. Many other instances of operations over high
grades might be produced ; one or two, however, will suffice. The
most interesting instance in the United States is that of the Balti-
more and Ohio Railroad, connecting the seaboard with the Missis-
sippi Valley, across the Alleghany Mountains. In the year 1850
there was transported 447,000 tons of merchandise, and 180,000
passengers, over this road ; and in the year 1860 the large amount

of 2,362,893 tons of freight, and 1,182,640 passengers. On this
road, some of the heaviest gradients that have yet been adopted by
American engineers, have been successfully used. Near the sum-
mit of the Alleghanies is a grade of 116 feet per mile, for eleven
and a half consecutive miles — ascending, going west ; and again,
on descending, we find gradients of 116 feet per mile, for eight and
a half consecutive miles. These gradients, together with curves of
400 feet radius, in many instances, have been successfully operated
on one of the great thoroughfares of the country for sixteen years.
Again, on the Virginia Central Railroad, also crossing the Alle-
ghanies, are gradients of 296 feet per mile, and the road was suc-
cessfully operated for five years.

Reference is here made to the report of the late General Charles
Ellet, the Chief Engineer of the road, who says :

" The length of descent, from summit to foot of grade, on the
eastern side, is two and thirty-seven one-hundredth s miles ; the road
descends, in this distance, 610 feet, with an average grade of 237
feet, and a maximum grade of 296 feet per mile."

And on the western side :

" The length of the descent is two and two-one-hundredths miles.

" Road descends, in this distance, 450 feet.

" Average grade, 223 feet per mile.

" Maximum grade, 280 feet per mile.

" On both sides of the mountain, the ruling curves are described
with a radius of 300 feet ; on which, gradients of 238 feet per
mile occur.

" The locomotives relied on, to perform this extraordinary service,
of 55,000 pounds, or twenty-seven and a half tons, have failed but
once, in two and a half years, to make their regular trips."

He further says :

" The mountains have been covered with snow for weeks in suc-
cession ; the cuts have been filled for long periods, many feet in
depth, with drifted snow ; the ground has been covered with sleet
and ice ; and every impediment due to bad weather and inclement
seasons, has been encountered and successfully surmounted in work-
ing the tracks. The total weight of engines is 55,000 pounds, or

twenty-seven and a half tons, when both boiler and tanks are sup-
plied with fuel and water enough for eight miles."

He also says :

" Ascending, the engines stop daily on a grade of 280 feet per
mile, and are held by the brakes while the tanks are Med, and.
started again, at the signal, without difficulty "

With this practical experience, afforded by the working of other
roads, it may be safely assumed that a twenty-four-ton engine, with
four drivers, will ascend the maximum gradients of your road, at
the rate of from fifteen to twenty miles per hour, with a freight
train of 100 tons.

TABLE OF GRADES,

FIEST DIVISION", TWENTY-ONE RULES.

GRADE S

LENGTH OF
PLANE, FT.

Grade, level

" 15 feet per mile, and under

a gQ u a a ' a

a ;",() it a a u

" 52 feet per mile

Total

34,000

50,900

2,800

3,400

23,900

115,000

6.43
9.64
0.53
0.64
4.53

21.77

TABLE OF PERFORMANCES

OP A THIRTY TON LOCOMOTIVE ON SIX DRIVERS — TOTAL ADHESIVE
WEIGHT THIRTY-THREE ONE-HALF TONS.

Maximum load on a level 1,684 tons

Maximum grade up which this engine 1 040 f t

can draw load of 76 tons, )

Maximum load for a grade of 180 feet 159£ tons

Mamimum " " " 200 " 127£ "

18
COMPARISON OF ELEVATIONS

TO BE OVERCOME ON VARIOUS RAILROADS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Max.
EOTJTE. in of and Grade,

feet.

Central Pacific R. R. of California

Boston Route

New York and Erie

New York Central

Philadelphia

Baltimore and Ohio

Charleston

Savannah

Santiago

Stockton and Cop'lis R. R. Cal. . .

Dist'ce

Elevation

Total rise

and

Miles.

Summit.

fall in feet

7,091

8,800

500

1,440

4,700

460

1,720

6,500

400

650

2,100

340

2,400

5,600

390

2,700

7,000

490

1,400

5,000

440

1,440

5,340

110

2,640

4,340

1,230

1,665

105
83
77
30
95

116
40
40

119
98

It will be seen that the ascents and descents of your road in
proportion to its length, is only twenty-one per cent, of that of the
Central Pacific Railroad, probably the best located line of railroad
in the United States.

WHAT WILL IT COST.

It is probably unnecessary to enter into a detailed statement of
the cost of the Stockton and Copperopolis Railroad, as the work of
construction and equipment has been already contracted for and
the first division well under way.

The contract with Messrs. Nagle & I vers, entered into by your
company on the 5th of December, 1865, for the sum of $1,250,000,
relieves me from this, an important part of an Engineer's report.
The grading was commenced on 12th of March, and at this date
there are nearly twelve miles graded and ready for the ties.

The iron, spikes, and chairs for twenty miles are all afloat, the
first shipment of which, from Liverpool, was made on the twenty-first
March, and should arrive here on or before the tenth of August
next.

The contract provides for a first-class road, in all particulars, the
iron to be forty-five pounds per lineal yard, three locomotives, with
passenger cars, box freight cars, platform and hand cars, sufficient
to do the business of the road for the first year.

Eighteen miles of your road is to be built and running by Sep-
tember next, and from the energetic and business-like manner in
which the work has been commenced, and so far prosecuted, there
is no reasonable doubt that the eighteen miles will be ready for
operations by the time specified.

The whole road to Copperopolis is to be built and running on or
before the first of September, 1869. The contractors having the
right to run the road, or any part thereof, during the term of their
contract, it is their interest, as well as yours, to have the work com-
pleted as soon as possible.

In order that the contractors may not be embarrassed in the con-
struction and equipment of the first section, by any delay on your
part to make such cash payments to them as their contract calls
for, the books of subscription to the capital stock of the company
have, by resolution, been opened, and commissioners appointed by
your Board, to take subscriptions to the amount of 6,000 shares,
the assessments on which will place in your hands ample means to
make such payments, having still in the hands of the Company
nearly one million dollars of stock for the construction of the moun-
tain division.

COMPARATIVE COST OF RAILROADS.

For your information on this head I will call your attention to the
annexed table of the cost of all the roads in the United States,
showing the average cost per mile of the twenty-four Northern
States, 841,368, and of the Southern States per mile, $26,151 ;
the Stockton and Copperopolis per mile, $31,250.

COST OF RAILROADS.

S TATE S

MILEAGE.

Total. Completed.

Cost Road
and

Equipment.

Cost

per

Mile.

Maine

New Hampshire ....

Vermont

Massachusetts

Rhode Island

Connecticut

New York

Pennsylvania

New Jersey

Delaware

Maryland and D. C. .
Western Virginia . . .

Kentucky

Ohio

Michigan

Indiana

Illinois

Wisconsin

Minnesota

Iowa

Missouri

Kansas

California

Oregon

S. and C. R. R

* Total..-.

Total 11 S'thn States

1,140 .59
687 .43
586 .17

1,348 .55
151
715

3,570

4,323

1,001

182

699 .40

361 .00

898 .40

3,954 .33

1,614 .50

2,482 .50

3,600 .70

1,449 .70

1,584 .00

2,037 .10

1,412 .30

360 .00

628

19.50

509 .37

659 .32

586 .17

1,280 .93

119 .25

635 .07

2,896 .49

3,610 .26

836 .27

124 .90

467 .30

361 .50

564 .20

3,388 .65

876 .22

2,199 .40

3,119 .40

1,045 .20

161 .00

804 .80

925 .75

40.00

147 .30

19.50

34,310 .61
14,927 .20

18,297,635

22,572,830

23,841,120

58,979,200

4,571,496

22,497,496

135,623,240

169,180,691

38,964,372

4,548,850

23,847.113

22,126,393

20,877,180

121,147,588

34,130,367

71,318,673

117,375,523

41,880,302

7,700,000

27,715,052

51,187,255

1,400,000

7,870,000

500,000

35,948
34,201
40,619
46,041
38,445
35,744
46,815
46,864
46,608
35,817
51,664
61,122
37,016
35,747
41,244
32,417
37,620
40,076
46,385
34,428
55,277
35,000
53,175
25,000

25,372.25:1,050,354,406 41,368
9,069 .46 237,054,548|26,151

49,237 .82

34,441 .71

1,287,310,993

WILL IT PAY?

To this portion of my Report I respectfully ask your especial
attention.

In order to arrive at as correct an estimate as possible of the
anticipated revenue of your road, I shall briefly enumerate the
several sources from which such anticipated revenue is expected to

be derived — the amount and direction of each, as collected from
the most reliable sources, for the years 1864 and 1865.
They will consist of:

1st. Transportation of Copper Ore.

2d. Transportation of Mining Freights.

3d. Transportation of Way Travel and Freights.

4th. Transportation of Through Passengers.

5th. Transportation of Mails and Express.

In estimating the revenues of your road it is gratifying to be
able to arrive at what will probably be a correct account of the
business to be done. The trade and travel to the upper or more
northerly portion of the country tributary to your road being so
well developed, the statistics of travel and freight can be closely
approximated. That part south of Tuolumne, is, however, only in
process of development, and may be expected, from the natural re-
sources thereof, to quadruple the amounts herein given within two
years after the completion of your road to Knight's Ferry.

The sources of information on which I have based my estimates
of revenue are : Shipper's Returns of down freights, collected by
City Collector, for 1864 ; the Agent of California Steam Navigation
Company, for up freights and passengers ; the Stage Companies, as
to passengers going through Stockton ; and County Assessors' Re-
ports, as to agricultural and manufacturing products.

I have endeavored to divest this part of the Report, as much as
possible, of speculative sources of revenue, and have relied solely
on tangible sources of information, reporting such facts and
figures as are the actual -results of past years' experience and
business.

TRANSPORTATION OF COPPER ORE.

The transportation of copper ore will be the largest item of
revenue at present developed. The extent and value of the cop-
per mines, in Salt Spring Valley, are so fully established as to leave
no doubt that the entire range, at least from Copperopolis to the
Calaveras river — a distance of twelve miles, will be, a few years
hence, one continued and connected copper mine.

Several of those mines have been in successful operation for
four years. It is difficult to arrive at complete and accurate returns

of the amount of ore extracted up to this time. Some approxima-
tion of the quantity may, however, be had from the accompanying
letter of Thos. McCarty, Esq., of Calaveras County, one of the
discoverers of these mines, since then a constant resident, and a
large owner in the Union, and other mines of this district. The
amount has been :

For 1862, 5,000 tons. For 1863, 12,000 tons.

For 1864, 25,000 tons. For 1865, 36,000 tons.

Total 78,000 tons.

The above shipments are satisfactory evidence of the extent and
value of these mines. Most of the shipments made have been from
the Union, the Keystone, the Campo Seco, the Lancha Plana, the
Napoleon, and the Calaveras mines. Of these the Union has pro-
bably furnished not less than fifteen-twentieths of the whole amount.
The rest of these mines, owing to the high rate of transportation and
want of capital, have not yet produced ores in sufficient quantity
for shipment, and all of them await anxiously the completion of
your road to enable them to do so.

The vein on which the Union and Keystone are located has been,
to a considerable extent, developed for ten miles by an almost con-
nected line of works, with occasional openings as far north as
Campo Seco ; and, in the opinion of experienced miners, there is
no doubt that, with an extensive system of workings, such as has
been employed on the Union, other rich mines will be developed,
which, with cheap transportation, will quadruple, in 1867, the freight
tonnage of last year.

The ores shipped from these mines are classified as No. 1 ore, of
from 17 to 22 per cent., and No. 2 ore, of from 10 to 17 per cent.
Of these, No. 1, only, has been shipped, leaving a large accumu-
lation of lower grade ores, either on the ground or otherwise dis-
posed of, amounting to many thousand tons, all of which will be
shipped either in the shape of ore, or " matte," when the road is
completed.

There is little doubt that the mines opened at Hunter's Valley,
in Mariposa County, and as far south as the Chowchilla, are part
of this same belt. The ores from these mines will reach your road

at the twenty-one-mile Junction, by the way of Knight's Ferry, and
cannot fall short of 160 tons per month, for the year 1867, and will
probably reach 600 tons per month, for 1868.

I have estimated the total freights of copper, including first and
second class from all the mines, at 65,400 tons during the first
year's working of your road. Heretofore the charges for copper
freight from Copperopolis to Stockton, has been $8 per ton of
2,000 pounds. The amount paid for freight during last year has
exceeded $300,000.

MINING FREIGHTS.

From the city Collector's Keport, and the most reliable data
within my reach, I extract the following table :

Arrivals and departures, small sail vessels .... 500

Custom House tonnage 12,000 tons.

Carrying Capacity 30,000 "

Arrival and departure, steamers (small) 160

Custom House tonnage 4,000 "

Carrying capacity 10,000 tons.

Steam N. Co's stm'rs, arrivals and departures . 626

Average freight per day 141 tons.

Total tons up freight 46,000 "

Total freight, steamer and sail, up 86,800 "

Down freight, per year (exclusive of copper) 50,000 "

Lumber imported 6,000,000 ft. B. M.

Potatoes imported, sacks of 100 lbs 60,000 sacks.

AGRICULTURAL FREIGHTS.

Wheat 100,000 bushels.

Barley 90,000 "

Wood 20,000 cords.

Hides * 60,000 lbs.

Wool 1,000,000 lbs.

TuleHay .. 2,000 tons.

Flour 25,000 bbls.

In 1865, there appears to have been sent to market nearly
2,000,000 bushels wheat, 1,500,000 bushels barley, and 7,000
tons of hay, from the country around Stockton.

Of the above up freight of 46,000 tons, at least two-thirds must
be distributed by the Stockton and Copperopolis Railroad ; esti-
mated at 25,090 tons, one half of which I have estimated as
" through freight," the rest " way freight," twenty-one miles.

The passenger movement I have estimated at thirty passengers,
each way per day, as the business travel of 1864 and 1865. (See
letter of Mr. Dooly, stage proprietor, at Stockton.) It being dur-
ing a period of extreme prostration of all mining pursuits, may
with safety be relied on.

The population, products, and property assessments, are taken
from the census reports of 1860, and Assessor's Reports of the
following counties:

, COTJKTIES.

San Joaquin
Calaveras . .
Tuolumne . .

Mono

Alpine

Mariposa . . .

Fresno

Stanislaus. .

Tulare

Merced

Popul'n

Assessed Val.

Sq.Miles

Farm'gLd.

Val. Prod.

Freights.

1860.

Dollars.

Area.

Acres.

S Agric'l.

9,435

4,455,058

1,452

385,000.4,455,058

10,000

16,299

2,006,786

1,140

100,360

313,815

71,040

16,229

1,536,258

1,430

131,012

462,800

8,280

1,100
2,450

135,874

498,574

1,237,370

j 360
} 590
5,159

6,243

1,884

' 66,000

150,000

4,605

911,715

9,240

996,604

4S0,000

2,675

2,245

888,419

1,228

304,000

531,000

4,444

4,638

1,306,380

7,181

200,604

618,000

3,159

1,141

816,318

1,384

444,800
2,628,380

225,000

562

64,385

13,792,752

25,949

7,205,673

105,839

Initial.

Xo Report.
Estimated.

It will be seen from the foregoing table that the territory tribu-
tary to your road, has a sectional area of 25,949 square miles,
with a population of 64,385, and a property value of -$13,792,752.

The principal towns and mining camps to be supplied in these
counties, are as follows : Mokelumne Hill, San Andreas, Chili
Camp, Campo Seco, Jenny Lind, Taylor's Bar, Upper and Lower
Calaveritas, Independent Flat, Railroad Flat, Big Trees, Murphy's,
Angels, Camanche, Lancha Plana, Poverty Bar, Double Springs,
West Point, Telegraph City, Aqueduct City, in Calaveras County ;
Lincoln, Volcano, Indian Diggings, in Amador County ; Sonora,
Columbia, Jamestown, Big Oak Flat, 'Chinese Camp, Garrotes,
Montezuma, Shaw's Flat, Tuttletown, Yankee Hill, Sawmill Flat,
Springfield, Don Pedro's Bar, Pine Log, in Tuolumne County ; Mar-
iposa, Princeton, Coulterville, Yosemite Valley, Mariposa Estate,
Hunter's Valley, Bear Valley, in Mariposa County ; Knight's
Ferry and Lagrange, in Stanislaus County ; Merced Falls and Snel-

lingville, in Merced County ; Millerton and Chowchilla, in Fresno
County.

WAYTRAVEL AND FREIGHT.

The surplus grain products, of San Joaquin County, adjacent to
the road, for a distance of six miles on each side, and eighteen
miles eastwardly, covering an area of two hundred and sixteen
square miles, will seek the road as an outlet to market. At least
four hundred acres, per square mile, is this year in grain — a total
grain area of 86,400 acres. Estimating the average yield at
twenty-five bushels per acre, we have a total grain yield of
2,160,000 bushels ; two-thirds of this, or 1,440,000 bushels, or
43,200 tons, will be transported to market, either at Stockton or
the mountains.

Estimating the average travel at twenty miles, we have 21,600
tons as the probable agricultural surplus for this year, to be trans-
ported the whole length of the road.

For the purposes of estimate, I have used 10,000 tons only, a
little less than one-half of the probable surplus, to be transported
forty miles.

Of the surplus hay crop, I have estimated 2,500 tons as the
consumption of Calaveras and Tuolumne, over the home produc-
tion, most, if not all of which, must come from the valley.

Way passengers, " local," can not be less than twenty each way
per day, or 14,600 per year. Through passengers, thirty per day,
or 29,200 per year. Knight's Ferry passengers are classed as
" Way Passengers, going South," and cannot be estimated at less
than twenty each way, per day. or 14,600 per year.

knight's ferry business.

At Knight's Ferry Junction will be distributed and collected all
the freight and travel for the counties south, heretofore mentioned.
This I have classsified as " Way Business," for reasons already
given.

From statistics collected by Mr. Gallup, of Lagrange, I have
compiled the following as the business now being done in this sec-
tion of country.

In 1865, the up freights imported to Knight's Ferry, and be-
yond, was 12,940 tons, and down freight, 4,737 tons, as per classi-
fied table in counties. (See table, page 26.)

The passenger travel he estimates at thirty per day, each way,
which agrees with Mr. Dooly's estimate (see his letter, page 35),
or per year, 21,900, for twenty miles of travel. Near Knight's
Ferry are extensive and valuable quarries of sandstone when
known and fully appreciated as building materials, will furnish a
large amount of down freight, as the supply is inexhaustible.

The rates of charges for freight and passengers, as established by
law, are for passengers ten cents per mile per passenger, and fifteen
cents per ton per mile for freight.

In the following table of " Estimates of Receipts," it will be seen
that I have estimated of up freight, distributed to the mountain
districts, 25,090 tons, and for down freights, including copper ores,
77,815 tons ; while in the Collector's returns, for the city of Stock-
ton, I find for up freights reported, 46,000 tons, and for down
freights, exclusive of copper ore, 50,000 tons, being a much larger
quantity than that given by me.

THROUGH PASSENGERS AND MAILS.

The through travel to Calaveras, Tuolumne, Alpine, and Mono
Counties, and beyond, I have estimated at thirty passengers per day
each way, or per year, 21,900 passengers. The mails and express
are estimated at the price paid in the Eastern States, or $375 per
mile per year, adding one-third.

ESTIMATE OF RECEIPTS.

The following classified estimate of receipts I have carefully com-
piled from sources entirely reliable, and it is confidently believed
the actual business of 1866-7 will much overrun the estimate
submitted.

FREIGHT RECEIPTS.

Items, Counties, &c.

Calaveras

Stanislaus

Tuolumne

Do. by Knight's Ferry

Mariposa

Merced

Fresno

Tulare

San Joaquin

Totals

Freight.
Tons.

5,640
3,926
5,990

950
4,239

200

815
2,750

520

25,090

Down

Freight.

Tons.

65,400
518
610
730
920
362
1,800
409

10,000

80,749

Total

Freights.

Tons.

71,040
4,444
6,600
1,680
5,159
562
2,675
3,159

10,520

105,839

Dis.

car'd
Miles

40
20
40
20
20
20
20
20
40

Per

Ton.

6 00
3 00
6 00
3 00
3 00
3 00
3 00
3 00
6 00

Freight
Receipts.

426,240

13,332

39,600

5,040

15,477

1,686

8,025

9,477

63,120

581,997 50

Freight

car. 1 mile.

Tons.

2,841,600
88,890

264,000
33,600

103,180
11,240
17,500
63,180
42,080

3,842,990

PASSENGER MOVEMENT RECEIPTS.

Through Passengers, 30 each way per day,
per year

Way Passengers going south, 30 each way
per day, per year

Way Passengers, local, 20 each way per
day, per year

Mails and Express, $475 per mile,

OTHER FREIGHTS.

Hay, tons

Cord Wood, cords .

Total receipts, passengers.

:so. Dist,

21,900
21,900
14,600

40
20

20
40

2,500

5,000: 20

4 00 87,600

2 00
2 00

6 00
1 50

43,800

29,200
19,000

15,000
7,500

S 202,100

Miles run.

876,000
438,000
292,000

100,000
100,000

1,806,000

WORKING EXPENSES.

The working expenses of any railroad are necessarily a large
item in the operation of the best constructed and managed railroads,
contingent to a great extent on the elevations to be overcome, the
curvature of location, and the intelligent and economical manage-
ment of its affairs or otherwise.

It is believed that in the two former of these sources of expense,
your road will commence its operations at a point where these
charges are reduced to the minimum cost, consistent with the oper-
ations of a first class road.

In order to establish an estimate of minimum running expenses,
we will take, as an example, the operations of the railroads in Massa-
chusetts, where, from long use, through a mountainous country, it is
expected the running expenses would be more than on a new road ;
and, also, taking an example of an opposite character, that of a new
road through a comparatively level country.

In the State of Massachusetts there are fifty-one railroad com-
panies, having 1,579 miles of road, and an aggregate capital of
$ 77,614,305 ; amount paid in, $68,629,823 ; aggregate cost,
$73,723,920; total revenue, $16,478,496; funded and floating
debt, $22,859,585 ; surplus earnings on hand, $5,093,550.

The results of operations of Massachusetts Railroads, in detail,
for the past three years, will be found in the following abstract :

Number of Railroads. . . .
Length of main lines, miles
" " branches, "
" double t'ck & sides

Cost of Railroads $

Capital paid in $

Funded Debt I

Floating Debt $

Total Debt $

Interest paid on Debt . . . $

Dividends paid $

Surplus $

Receipts from Pass $

« « Freight . . . $

" " Mails, &c.$

Total Receipts . .$

Expenses Road Bed. . . .$
" Machinery....!

Other Expenses $

Total " $

Net Income $

Per ct. of Exp's to Income
Net Income on Cost, pr. ct.
Miles run, Pass. Trains. . .

" " Freight Trains .

" " other Trains. . .

Total miles run

Receipts per train, ™J° cts.
Expenses " " cts.

Net Income " " cts.

Cost of Fuel " " cts.

Road repairs " " cts.

Engine " " " cts.

Car " " " cts.

Passengers carried

" mileage

Tons Freight carried

Tonnage mileage

1862.

38
1223 .4

162.5

541.1

60,010,348

45,403,456

14,659,640

877,554

15,536,837

852,554

2,296,701

3,999,040

3,949,033

4,131,597

517,099

9,654,751

1,052,325

848,347

3,358,273

5,291.286

3,542,093

54.8

5 .9

3,460,427

2,681,348

153,089

6,294,864

153.4

11,482,625

175,403,775

3,671,885

137,879,129

1863.

_ 38

1303 .8

171.9

540.9

61,610,484

45,988,957

14,510,061

1,282,444

15,792,505

902,212

2,981,890

5,392,661

4,912,121

4,878,131

660,531

11,711,127

1,066,831

1,044,727

4,282,570

6,429,841

4,331,153

54.9

7.03

3,620,540

2,863,442

238,622

6;890,306

175.6

14,297,194

218,080,413

4,366,685

161,422,514

1864.

~38

1272 .4

163.5

545.2

61,896,123

46,643,858

14,178,801

1,573,548

15,775,750

1,141,655

3,448,115

4,993,411

6,649,343

6,158,442

735,636

14,981,015

1,396,444

1,755,524

6,301,957

9,619,224

5,313,070

64.2

8.6

4,070,107

3,224,943

270,918

7,606,811

196 .6

126.5

69.9

17.6

13.7

9.7

13.1

17,575,230

290,819,276

4,954,676

182,377,580

From the above table it will be seen that the average per cent,
of expenses to income, is 58.6. Included in this amount are ex-
traordinary expenses not incurred in operating California railroads,

such as high cost of wood and cost of clearing and repairing track,
incident to the inclement winters of that State.

The train expenses per mile, run on the roads of this State, are

as follows :

cents.

Engine and Fireing 7.78

Oil, Waste, and Tallow 1.84

Watching and Cleaning 67

Repairs to Road and Machinery 8.83

Wood 6.23

Water Supply 1.04

Total Train Expense per mile run 26.39

(Twenty-six cents and thirty-nine hundredths.)

The average cost of transporting one passenger one mile in this
State, does not exceed two cents and eighty-eight hundredths, and
the average cost of one ton of freight, one mile, five and thirty-nine
hundredths cents.

The cost of passenger movement on the Illinois Central Railroad,
per train per mile run, for 297,644 miles, is twenty-nine cents and
twenty-nine hundredths ; for freight, per train, per mile run, forty-
one cents and ninety-nine hundredths, while the average cost of all
train miles run is thirty-two cents and eighty-six hundredths.

EE CAPITULATION OF ESTIMATES.

ITEMS

Through Passengers, per year

Way Passengers, " "

Through Freights, tons, " "

Way Freights, " ■ " "

Mails and Express, " "

Cord Wood, cords, " "

Hay, tons, " "

Dols. Amount.

21,9004 00 $

36,500 2 00

88,160 6 00'

17,679 3 00"

5,000 !l
2,500 1 6

50
00,

87,600
73,000
528,960
53,039
19,000
7,500
15,000

Total Receipts.

$784,097

WORKING EXPENSES.

ITEMS.

Transporting Passengers

" Freight

Local Taxes *

Salaries, Rents, Insurance, &c.

*TJ. S. Internal Revenue not included.

Pass & Frg't

Train,
Miles run.

1,806,000
3,842,990

Total 283,349 96

Per

Mile,

Cts.

2.88
5.39

Amount.
Dolls. Cts.

52,212 80

207,137 16

12,000 00

Total Receipts $784,097

" Working Expenses ■ 283,349

Net Revenue 500,748

The Cost of the Road, built and running as per

contract. .♦ 11,250,000

The net earnings of your road will therefore be forty per cent,
per annum, or three and a third per cent, per month on cost.
After a most careful examination of all the resources of revenue
herein referred to, I am confidently of the opinion that the business
of the first year will exceed the estimates herein presented.

Anticipating the development of the country from which your
road must ever be the outlet, the opening of new sources for industry,
by increasing the facilities of transportation, and the consequent in-
increase of population and wealth, results which all railroads inva
riably produce, it would have been perfectly legitimate to have
added to the foregoing estimates of revenue such per cent, of antic-
ipated increase of business, as is warranted by the experience of
other roads similarly situated. Such has, however, not been the
case in making up the anticipated revenues of your road. Nothing
has been included but what I have the best evidence of believing
to exist — being fully convinced before making a minute examination,
that the business now being done was ample to warrant the expend-
iture of a much larger amount than the construction of your road
will cost.

The object intended, throughout this report, has been to present

facts. I have been obliged to exclude all anticipated sources of
revenue in any manner speculative, and have reduced even those
which I believe to be entirely reliable, in some cases, to less than
one-half the amount reported to me.

Before closing this report, I take the liberty to lay before you
some general conclusions on the

RAILROADS OF THE UNITED STATES,

apparent to all who have watched the progress of this commercial
and social necessity, equally as applicable to the railroads of Cal-
ifornia, which are as yet in their infancy, as to those of the Western
States from which they are drawn.

The value of every species of property must depend upon the degree
of necessity for its general use. The instrumentality that supplies
society with food, and with other articles, always equally indispen-
sible, and that is the sole medium for the movement of its members
from place to place, must rank vastly higher, as an investment, than
such as depend upon the faith of individuals, or even on political
organizations ; or of enterprises which, while engaged in supplying
human wants, are often injudiciously prosecuted, and liable to be
pushed far beyond the public consumption.

Such an agent, of prime necessity, is a railroad. And, although
only about thirty years have elapsed since its first introduction, it
has now become so much of a necessity as to be included in, and
become a part of, all the operations of society.

The railroads of the United States have created by far the
greatest part of our national wealth ; and without'them there could
be neither domestic nor foreign commerce carried on to any con-
siderable extent. By their instrumentalities the producer and cus-
tomer are brought in contact. Every clay increases their usefulness
and power. So much are railroads interwoven into our well being
as a nation that society cannot put forth a single great effort in
which a railroad is not the chief agent and actor.

The universal necessity for their use measures and establishes
their value as an investment. In the United States such use is
not only universal, touching every industrial operation, but of its

extent there can hardly be a limit, because no limit can be placed
to the production and commerce which demand their construction.
These productions, whether agricultural, mineral, or mechanical, are
necessary in proportion to the new influences that are continually
being brought into use. This fact should be constantly borne in
mind. The commerce, for example, between New York and
Chicago, is, four fold in volume and value what it was six
years ago, when Chicago numbered 85,000 inhabitants, against
185,000 at the present time. The traffic now exceeds the capacity
of all the lines opened for its accommodation ; and it is well known
that if the capacity of the railroads between New York and Chi-
cago were doubled, there would be more freight offering than all of
them could move. The same result is also apparent, but not to so
great an extent, on our roads in California. The operations of the
Central Pacific Railroad, for the month ending October, 1865,
amounted to about 176,000, through a section of the State. that, in
1861, was mostly unoccupied mountain lands. The San Francisco
and San Jose Railroad has fully doubled its business since the com-
mencement of its operations. The Sacramento Valley Railroad
increased its business, from one stage line, in 1854, to a business of
nearly $270,000, in 1864.

The railroads of the United States were, almost without excep-
tion, undertaken, not as investments, but as means for the creation
of capital, by the development of resources. It has been for the
purpose of opening new outlets, alike for the benefit of the pro-
ducer and the customer, that almost all the railroads in America
have been undertaken ; all involved great pecuniary sacrifices to
those employed in their early construction ; they were to create,. in
a great measure, a traffic, and years were required to- do it; the
country along most of our leading railroads, then nearly uninhab-
ited, is now teeming with population, supplied with all the appliances
of productive labor, so that the chief concern of those early pro-
jectors and pioneers of railroad lines is not now how to develop a
traffic, but how to accommodate all that offers.

There* can, in fact, be no contingencies in which the traffic of our
railroads should not increase in the future as it has done in the
past. The return of peace has not diminished it, as we find that
the leading railroads in the United States have, in many cases,
doubled their business in the last three years.

The following table will show the operations of eleven of the
great thoroughfares of the Northern States, for the years ending
1861 and 1865 :

EO AD S.

Atlantic and Great Western

Chicago and Alton

Chicago and Rhode Island

Chicago and North Western

Chicago and Great Eastern

New York and Erie

Illinois Central

Michigan Central

New York Central

Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago
Philadelphia and Reading

Kev. in 1861

DOLLARS.

Not Built
1,098,464
1,261,050
2,811,544
211,077
6,214,182
2,899,612
2,025,142
6,303,703
3,031,787
3,315,501

Kev. in 1865

DOLLARS.

6,938,611
3,840,092
3,222,692
7,958,980
1,103,821

15,295,915
7,181,208
4,504,549

13,357,709
8,489,062
6,324,083

And while we see that the traffic on our railroads has increased
to such an extent as to tax their full capacity, the financial condi-
tion of the companies was never so prosperous.

Value of Railroad Securities in April, 1866.

Value of Stock.

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 112£

New York Central Railroad 91|

New York and Erie Railroad 108|

Little Miami Railroad (Ohio) 140

Boston and Worcester Railroad (Mass.) .... 134

Camden and Amboy Railroad (N. J.) 120

New Jersey Central Railroad 135

Delaware, Lackawana, and Western Railroad 132

Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad 114

Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad 115
Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railroad . . 123
Hudson River Railroad (N. Y.) 107i

They are nearly all relieved from the pressing liabilities that
weighed them down eight years ago, and consumed their earnings.
3

Their increased receipts have enabled nearly every company to
secure any money accommodation necessary for conducting their
business, in the most expeditious and economical manner, and most
of them, instead of being borrowers, and always in the market with
their securities, are now mostly all large capitalists, and investing
in the National loans.

The effect of building railroads upon the prosperity and wealth
of this State cannot be better illustrated than by the rapid en-
hancement in value of all property brought within their influence.
As examples we will take the States of Pennsylvania and Iowa.

Within the railroad era of the Western States, or the last ten
years, the rate of increase of real and personal wealth in Iowa has
been more than nine hundred per cent. ; the absolute increase of
wealth has been two hundred forty-seven millions of dollars. While
Pennsylvania has increased at the rate of ninety-six per cent.

The wealth, per capita of Iowa, in 1850, was $132, while in
1860 it amounted to 8366, or 277 per cent.

The wealth of Pennsylvania, in 1850, per capita, was $ 312 ;
in 1860 the per capita wealth was $187, a rate of increase of
fifty-six per cent.

No one acquainted with California will deny that there are more
causes to produce the same, or even greater results, from the build-
ing of railroads in this State than existed in Iowa previous to the
building of her railroads.

For these reasons, which all can easily understand, I believe no
property of any kind or nature is so well worthy the attention of
capital as the railroad securities of the United States. They un-
derlie the whole of our social and commercial fabric. They must
be built and used just so long as men eat, drink, and move. In-
deed, it is impossible to find any interest, or investment, of which
so much can be said in its favor, or against which so little can be
urged.

It is believed, that of the 34,441 miles of railroads now running
in the United States, which have been built within the last thirty
years, at a cost of $1,287,310,993 — yielding a revenue of not less
than 1369,426,276 — that there is no forty miles thereof that can
offer better inducements for profitable investment than the Stockton
and Copperopolis Railroad ; and it is certain that no forty miles of

road in the United States, was ever undertaken with such an assur-
ance of business, already developed, as that waiting for the con-
struction of your road.

Trusting that the above report may serve to explain the most
prominent features of your enterprise, and its assurance for profit-
able investment, from resources already developed ; and, soliciting
your indulgence towards any imperfections or omissions that all
reports are liable to contain, however carefully compiled, I am,

Very Respectfully,

W. S. WATSON,
Chief Engineer S. & C. R. R. Co.

Stockton, May 20th, 1866.

Stockton, May 19th, 1866.
W. S. Watson,

Dear Sir : — I do hereby certify that the present travel, by
stages, from and to the southern mines, will average at least thirty
passengers per day, each way ; and by private teams, from six to
twelve ; and from my knowledge of the geographical lay of the
southern part of the State, from Stockton, that all passengers and
freight destined therefor, will have to pass over the Stockton and
Copperopolis Railroad, even if built but sixteen miles from here,
the latter point being just so many miles nearer to the most south-
ern point from Stockton, as the distance is from Stockton to* Cop-
peropolis ; or, in other words, every mile in the direction of Cop-
peropolis is so much in the direction of all the travel to the southern
counties.

Very Respectfully Yours,

M. J. DOOLEY,

Stage Proprietor.

REPORTS

OF THE

BOARD OF DIRECTORS/?/

AND

CHIEF EIGINEEE,

OF THE

an Jfranxko antr fprpfrilk

/ 1 >

EAILKOAD COMPANY.

AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF STOCKHOLDERS,
MARYSVILLE, MAY 10TH, 1860.

MARYSVILLE :

W. F. HICKS & CO., PRINTER? , CORNER FIRST AND D STREETS'.

1860.

•v *

OFFICERS

OF THE

Bu Jmrisar anir pargsirille

RAIL ROAD COMPANY.

OFFICERS FOR 1859.

DIRECTORS :

J. B. FRISBIE, Vallejo,
D. W. C. RICE, Marymlle,
W. K. HUDSON,

A. S. RANDALL, MarysvUk,

J. W. MOORE,

J. E. GALLOWAY, "

J. H. UPDEGRAFF, Knight's Landing.

Peesident, J. B. FRISBIE.
Vice Peesident, D. W. C. RICE.
Seceetaey, A. S. RANDALL.
Tbeastjeee, W. K. HUDSON.
Chief Engineer, D. B. SCOTT.

OFFICERS FOR 1860.

DIRECTORS:

J. B. FRISBEE, Vallejo
D. W. C. RICE,
W. K, HUDSON,

W. G. HUNT, Yolo County.

A. S. RANDALL, Marymlle,
J. E. GALLOWAY,
C. G. MOXLEY,

President, J. B. FRISBIE.
Vice Peesident, D. W. C. RICE.
Seceetaey, A. S. RANDALL.
Teeasuree, W. K. HUDSON.
Cotef Engineer, D. B. SCOTT.

DIRECTORS' REPORT.

REPORT OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS.
■ +»»

To the Stockholders of the San Francisco and Marysville Railroad
Company :

Gentlemen : — On the occasion of our third annual meeting, we have
the honor to submit a report of the present financial standing, resources
and prospects of the Company.

FINANCES.

We have now, upon the Books, a Capital Stock Subscription of
$626,700, represented by 6,267 shares, and divided as follows :

Individual subscription list of 2,267 shares divided among 143 stockholders,

and representing a stock subscription of $ 226,700 00

The County of Yuba holds 2,000 shares representing 200,000 00

The County of Solano holds 2,000 shares representing 200,000 00

Total, $ 626, 700 00

Upon this there have been declared four assessments of 10 ^ cent. each, upon

which has been paid the sum of $ 191,549 00

There has been work done amounting to §140,896 19

There is now on hand in the Treasury 50,652 81

S 191,549 00

RESOURCES.

It is difficult if possible to arrive at the true value of the property
secured to the Company, and in our estimates we have been careful,
rather to underrate thin be extravagant :

Sixty thousand acres of swamp and overflowed land, donated by the State of
California,* at $10 ^ acre $ 600,000 00

Sixteen hundred acres of land donated by Capt. J. B. Frisbie, at Vallejo, and
half mile of water front, valued jointly at 1,000,000 00

Other donations at Marysville and along the hue of the road, for Depot
grounds, etc., , 150,000 00

Total, 81,750,000 00

"We would remark of the above property, that the tule, swamp or lands
subject to overflow, will, when reclaimed, be the most productive and

* The time for reclaiming these lands was by Act of the Legislature last winter, extended
until next Spring.

valuable in the State. The bottom lands along the Sacramento,
Feather, and Yuba Rivers, rate at $25 to $40 per acre ; but we assume
that the body of swamp lands donated by the State to the Company
will on being reclaimed, be worth but $10 per acre.

The munificent donation by Capt. Frisbie, includes part of the regu-
larly laid out town of Yallejo, and in conjunction with the franchise of
one half mile of water front granted by the State, will on a fair esti-
mate, on the completion of the road be worth to the Company an
amount equivalent to one-third of the estimated cost of the road, or as
we have given it in round numbers of $1,000,000. The estimate for
the donations at Marysville and along the line of the road, we think
full low enough.

The schedule of the property secured to the road, together with the
capital stock subscribed, will make as available resources of the Com-
pany, the sum of $2,376,700, and may be stated thus :

Available property of the Company $1,750,000 00

Indivi lual subscription $226,700 00

Yuba County subscription .' 200,000 00

Solano County subscription , 200,000 00

626,700 00

Total, $2,376,700 00

Which deducted from the contract price for building and equiping
the road, ($3,500,000 00) will leave a debt necessary to be created of
only about $1,000,000, or a ratio of cost at the contract price to the
amount paid in on the capital stock of 1.47 to 1.

CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE ROAD.

On the 3d of August, 1858, a contract was signed between the Com-
pany, and D. C. Haskin, Esq., for constructing, completing and equiping
the entire line of road from Marysville to Yallejo, including the erection
of all required depots and way stations, buildings, etc., contemplated in
the former report of the Chief Engineer, and the reclamation of all the
swamp and overflowed lands, over which the road passes. The consid-
eration at which this to the stockholders, very favorable contract, was
made, was the payment of three and one half millions of dollars to Mr.
Haskin, as fast as the work progressed at the rates estimated by the Chief
Engineer, in the following manner : One and one half millions in Bonds
of the Company, secured by mortgage upon all property of the Com-
pany, one and one half millions in full paid stock of the Company, and
one half million in cash.

All moneys, bonds, or other property of value possessed by a Railroad
Company either by donation or purchase, becomes part of its capital

stock, equivalent to its par valuation. The value of the real and per-
sonal assets and franchises our Company has secured to it, as shown
under the head of "Recources," when compared with that contributed
to the capital stock, and the total cost of some of the prominent roads
in the Atlantic States, will show that but few of the companies en-
umerated below have had the amount paid in to their capital stock on
completion of their respective roads, equal in value to the assets to the
San Francisco and Marysville Railroad, will be enabled to show almost
at the incpiency of its construction. We call your attention to the sub-
joined table, at the bottom of which we have added our road for a
more ready comparison.

A TABLE
Compiled from "The American Railroad Journal" of March 17th, 1860,
giving the names of some of the principal Railroads in operation in
different States of the Union, and their financial condition up to the
latest returns :

States.

Name of Company.

Length
in op-
erati'n

Capital
paid in

Amount of
Debt.

Total cost
of road and
equipment

Ratio of cost to
to capital paid
in.

Miles.
156
144
556
465
151
386
387
162
287
111
141
132
188
206
203
250
135
2S8
708
326
210
329
539
182
22

Dollars.

5,150,000

3,758,466

24,000,000

11,000,000

11,737,041

13,249,125

10,111,800

1.340,213

2,237,665

1,582.169

1,628,356

2,441,176

3,343,812

2,697,090

3,942,368

3,573,000

1,647,700

2,S00,000

10,249,210

6,026,400

4,629,340

6,057,840

8,975,400

3,330,657

791,100

Dollars.

6.334,246

9,256,644

14,333,771

27,401,300

13,320,950

16,932,517

14,174,259

893,446

3,143,616

3,267,532

4 799,458

3,260,973

4,201.325

2,573.261

5.572,146

7,650,000

1,336,816

5,000,000

21,297,277

4.075,481

2,990,000

8.403,152

10,159,460

8,957,837

756,000

Dollars .
11,030,279
11,388,278
31,010,257
36,632.742
21,532,058
26,847,084
28,308,155
2,976.163
6,297^099
4,019,995
6,608.311
6,250,841
7,445,674
4,792,021
9.320,288
10,542,000
2,984,516
6,000.000
23,022^013
9,550,393
8,149,084
13,996.307
17,438,330
9,236,441
1,547,100

2>.14 to 1'

3.03 to 1

Pennsylvania. ..

North Carolina. .

Tennessee

Kentucky

Ohio

Ne w York Central

Philadelphia and Reading.

Pennsylvania

Baltimore and Ohio

Wilmington and Weldon.
Memphis and Charleston,
i.ovington and Lexington.

Cin. W. and Zanesville. . .

Cleveland and Toledo

Sandusky, Dayton & Cin.
Cleveland and Pittsburg. .
Toledo, Wabash & West'n
Madison andlndiadapolis.
Louisville ,N. A. & Chicago

1.29 to 1
3.33 to 1
1.83 to 1
2.02 to 1

2.80 to 1
2,22 to 1

2.81 to I
2.54 to 1
4.05 to r

2.56 to 1
2.22 to 1
1.77 to 1
2.36 to 1
2.95 to 1
1 .81 to 1

2.15 to 1
2.24 to 1

Galena and Chicago

Chicago, B. and Quincy..

Mich. S. and N. Indiana.

1.58 to 1

1.76 to 1
2.31 to 1
1.94 to 1

2.77 to ]

Sacramento Valley

Aggregate

San Fran, and Marysville

195 to 1

6664

146,299,928

200,091,467

316,925,429

2.17 to 1

2,376,700

1,123,300

3,500,000

1.47 to 1

Of the twenty-five roads comprised in the above list ; the aggregate
cost to build and equip compared with the total amount paid in to the
different companies, is as 2.17 to 1, or for every dollar paid in by the
stockholders, two dollars and seventeen cents were expended in con-
struction, &c. ; the excess of expenditures over receipts being raised
by loans secured by mortgage, or such other security as the road may
A

have to offer. A reference to the schedule of the assets of our roau
given under "Resources" will demonstrate that our affairs will very
favorably compare with those of our Atlantic sisters ; our ratio of ex-
penditure to capital paid in being but 1.47 to 1.

Negotiations are now pending in London with reasonable probabili-
ties of success for the sale of one half million dollars of the Bonds of
the Company.

In Jan. last, Mr. Haskin sublet all the grading from this city to Suisun,
except about seven and a half miles in Sutter county, to be completed
by the 1st of July, and from the energy and perseverance exhibited by
the sub-contractors, there is every reason to believe that they will im-
prove upon the contract time. With the road opened to Suisun City,
and we have the assurance of the contractor, in whom we repose the
utmost confidence, that it will be within the next twelve months, we
shall be within five hours of San Francisco, the entrepot of the State,
This connection will enable the road to go into active and successful
operation immediately.

Of the amount of business to be controlled by the road the Engineer
has in his first report made an elaborate statement, and from that and
the increased wealth and population of the count es through which we
pass, we may safely estimate our receipts at not less than $ 2,000 per
day, which will fully sustain the assertion of the Engineer in his former
report concerning the unprecedented revenue to be anticipated.

The foregoing statements are based upon evidence which is reliable,
and in closing we cannot but congratulate the stockholders upon the
reasonable certainty of an early completion of the road and that as a
paying enterprise it will rank with the first in the world.
Respectfully submitted,

A. S. RANDALL, Secretary,

S. F. and M. R. R. Co.

ENGINEER'S REPORT.

CHIEF ENGINEER'S REPORT.

To the President and Directors of the San Francisco and Marysville
Rail Road Company :

Oentlemen : — Since my report in February 1858, on completing the
preliminary survey for your road, and early in the following spring,
under directions of a Committee appointed by your Board, I made
further examination of the section of country east of and contiguous
to the previous line surveyed from Marysville to Cache Oreek^
contemplating by a change of route for the permanent location, to de-
crease if possible, the extent of low ground to be crossed near to the
Sacramento river, and at the same time approach as near a direct line
as circumstances would admit of in the location from Marysville to a
selected point for turning the subsiding spurs from the Coast Range,
known as the Vaca Hills,* northerly of, and at the entrance to Suisun
Valley from that of the Sacramento.

The favorable result of this partial examination induced a change of
route, but left undecided the definite point for crossing the Sacramento
until time would permit of the two routes pesented for consideration,
being examined more minutely in their extensions south of the river.

From Feather river to a point south of the tule and near the Sacra-
mento, a distance of twenty miles, the route being common to either
point for crossing the Sacramento, the location was at once selected

*These bills were heretofore erroneously called the Montezuma Hills. The Montezumas
are 12 or 15 miles distant, in a south east direction, and range up -with the Sacramento
from the head of Suisun Bay. Another error occurred inadvertently in my former report
which I will here correct. The large slough or creek channel, north of the Vaca Bills,
extending east from Vacaville was called Ulates Creek. I am informed by residents on it
that this water channel is known as the Arroyo, and is so designated in the Spanish Grant
to the lands through which it courses. Ulates Creek forms in a small valley at the base of
the hills northeast of Vacaville and disimbogxies on the plain north of the Arroyo, and
westerly of Mr. Morpin's residence.

and grades established, and that portion of the line staked off prepara-
tory for grading.

During the summer and fall I extended examinations of the two
routes from the tule north of the Sacramento, to intersection with
original line from Smith's Ferry at the Vaca Hills ; and from thence to
tide water in Suisun Bay.

The first of those routes preserved a continuation of the direct line
across the tule, which is nearly on an air line from Marysville to the
Vaca Hills, until approaching the Sacramento river, when it became
necessary to curve, to accomodate the crossing to the course of the
stream, which at this place was nearly parallel with the general direc-
tion of survey. After making the crossing, a reversed curve was
requisite to regain the course departed from. The north bank of the
river and the approach thereto was sufficiently elevated to have afford-
ed the requirements for a good crossing ; but on the south side the
bank immediately drops off or declines back from the margin of the
stream into the low tule lards extending out to and across Sycamore
slough, a distance of about three miles.

From the extent of low ground south of the river, in connection with
Sycamore and other sloughs to have been encountered in the adoption
of this route, although the distance would have been somewhat reduced,
would not have been improving over that by Smith's Ferry : hence a
further description of its extension is unnecessary.

The other route which claimed attention was that crossing the Sac-
ramento at the town of Knight's Landing, situated three and a half
miles below, on the south side of the river, and immediately below the
mouth of Sycamore slough. The favorable location and many advan-
tages afforded by crossing the river at this place, which has been adop-
ted as a point on the road will presently be considered.

On making the final location from the Sacramento, into and across
Suisun Yalley, it was found not only necessary, but advantageous
in many respects to depart from the original survey, which, after turn-
ing the point at the Yaca Hills, followed close under the base of the
range to the northwest, about two miles, until the slopes receded to the
west with the expansion of the valley ; then continuing direct over its
open and uniform surface, passed about 1,000 feet west of the small
cluster of buildings marking the town site of Fairfield, which has since
been created the permanent seat of Justice for Salano county.

"Within the last two years the entire valley has been laid out, con-
forming to United States survevs, into convenient farms enclosed with

substantial fences. Permanent buildings adopted to the wants of the
husbandman have been erected, and from the high state of cultivation
to which the productive soil is being subjected, the prosperity of the
occupants is apparent.

At the present time to obtain the right of way over those farms,
owing to the manner in which they would be crossed, would subject your
company to haavy damages.

Fairfield, also, a well laid out and flourishing town, since having
become the County seat on its removal from Benicia, has expanded over
the valley until its western limits extend beyond the line defining my
preliminary survey, immediately on which have been erected beautiful
and costly private residences, surrounded by shrubbery, ornamental
gardens, vineyards, &c, &c, which could neither be molested nor de-
spoiled. Hence it became necessary to accommodate the location of
this portion of the line to circumstances.

In my former report I suggested extending a branch or side tract
from the main line in Suisun Valley to the steamboat landing at Suisun
City.

The length of branch required to have reached the head of the
Basin, at Suisun, I find on an accurate computation of the distance from
the nearest point en-passant would have been 5,800 feet ; but by the
conciliatory change of location effected, this distance has been reduced
to 2,800 feet.

The line as now located passes by the edge of the marsh, or tidal
lands along the eastern boundary of Fairfield, and about equi distant
between the business centre of that place and Suisun City.

At the entrance to Suisun from the Sacramento Valley, upon exami-
nation I found by throwing the location about 8000 feet east of the
primary survey, and turning the point or eastern extremity of the Vaca
Hills, the elevation to be overcome in ascending from the former into
the latter valley would be considerably reduced, which would propor-
tionally deminish the grade in making the ascent, and materially lessen
the heavy work unavoidable by the old line.

In consideration of the change of location made at the Sacramento
river, and at Fairfield, this alteration was made without a material sac-
j rifice of distance, and in general, owing to the more favorable cross-
ings, given at numerous sloughs, &c, placed the line on better ground
between those points.

LOCATION.
For convenience of reference I have made five divisions of the line

oi road from the city of Marysville to tfife terminus, at umc -wa^,
Vallejo; to-wit :

Supplemental Divisiou A — Extending from Marysville to southwest bank

of B'eather river, as per former report ,25 miles.

1st Division — Extending through Sutter county from Feather river to south

hank of the Sacramento at Knight's Landing 24,07 "

2d Division — Extending through Yolo county, from Knight's Landing to north

bank of Putah creek 19,71 "

3d Division — Extends in Solano county, from Putah creek to Depot in Suisun

Valley intermediate of Suisun City and Kairfield 23,22 "

4th Division — Extends in Solano courity from Depot in Suisun Valley via:

Green Valley Canon route to terminus, Vallejo 17,94 "

Making total length of Eoad 85,19 miles.

Before reviewing the located line comprised in the 1st, 2d and 3d
Divisions, I would observe that as yet no definite point has been deter-
mined on for Depot purposes in Marysville ; but whatever grounds
may hereafter be selected for those purposes will be made in accor-
dance with and will not affect the located point for crossing Feather
river, which is that assumed on making the preliminary survey, above
Yuba City, on line with the centre prolongation of Fifth street, Marys-
ville.

An air line drawn from this point to that selected for turning the
eastern point of the Vaca Hills, at the entrance to Suisun Valley,
crosses the Sacramento at the large bend to the west above Knight's
Landing and three and a quarter miles below Smith's Ferry. Thence
crossing Sycamore slough, one and one eighth of a mile west of Knight's
Landing, and Cache Creek one and three-quarter miles easterly of
Cashville, reaches the south side of the timber, passing 5,000 feet west
of Freeman's store, at Yolo City. Continuing and crossing Putah
creek 2,700 feet below McMahon's, and cutting the grove of timber
south of the creek ; leaves Sylvey's on the Telegraph road 6,800 feet,
to the east ; crosses that road about three miles below, and continuing tc
the hills, crossing the Mt. Diablo meridian east of Mr. Morpin's resi-
dence.

The distance from Feather river to the Yaca Hills by this direct line
is 59.45 miles ; thence to Fairfield, seven miles making a total of 66.3'
miles. Between Feather river and the Yaca Hills, the line of location
lies to the east of a direct line, the greatest departure therefrom being
one and one-eighth of a mile at Knight's Landing.

Commencing with the 1st Division on the south east bank of Feather
river, and extending back on to the high ground west of the slough in
order to form an appropriate curve; the line then deflects to the south.
From this point to that selected for crossing the Sacramento at Knight's

Landing, a direct line would involve a much greater extent of low tule
and grass land than would be encountered by making a slight detour
to the west, which would compensate for the small increase of distance
in decreased cost of construction ; hence the located line deflects to the
west of a direct course, re-crosses the slough one and a quarter miles
from the river, and continues for 6.36 miles direct, down the easterly-
side thereof to its extreme eastern bend. Here another deflection, of
two degrees, is made to the west, and the line is then carried direct
14.34 miles, crossing the tule and low lands intermediate to the edge of
the timber and brush-skirting the Sacramento river above Knight's
Landing. Thence deflecting to the east, through the brush westerly of
the river road, with a sweeping curve of 12,000 feet radius, for 6,400 feet,
the low ground bordering the tule on the east is avoided.

A tangent is then extended parallel with the course of the river
4,500 feet, uniting with a curve to the west, of 4,000 feet radius, for
2,500 feet.

This curve terminates with another tangent 6.47 miles in length ;
1,350 feet from the commensement of which the Sacramento river is
crossed 200 feet above Mr. Snowball's Ferry, and below the steamboat
landing.

The width of the river at the crossing, from top to top of banks, is
350 feet; channel unchangeable, with an average depth of water at an
ordinary stage from 18 to 20 feet. The extent of tule land proper,
crossed by the line of road between Feather and Sacramento rivers is
four and a quarter miles. The lowest point in the bed of this tule is
forty four feet lower than the bank of Feather river, and seventeen feet
lower than that of the Sacramento at the Landing.

Separating the low lands bordering Sycamore slough, from the tule
formed at the debouchment of Cache creek on to the plain southeast of
Knight's Landing, is a ridge extending out from the river, and expand-
ing, into a timbered plain, constituting a portion of the rich and pro-
ductive land of the "Cache creek country." This ridge being above
the influence of high water, for several months, annually, forms the only
point of approach by land, from the interior country west of the Sac-
ramento to its banks, that there is to be found from the head of Syca-
more slough to the Montezuma Hills, which is by direct line about
eighty miles.

On leaving the river, the line of location continues direct along the
eastern side of the ridge, passing through enclosed and well cultivated
3

farms until within 1.37 miles of Cache creek, when it enters the brush
and willows, in which it continues, crossing the creek, until the open
ground is regained in Buckner & Nelson's field, about 1,000 feet east of
Harbin's ford. Thence deflecting to the east, on a curve of 11,510 feet
raidius, for 800 feet, where another tangent is extended 12.48 miles, to
a point in Hutchinson & Green's "Large Farm" field north of Putah
creek.

On this tangent, after traversing for three-quarters of a mile through
Buckner & Nelson's field, and through a corner of Mr. Coyle's pasture,
the Cache creek timber is entered, on land belonging to Mr. Watkins,
one and a half miles south of the creek, and seven and a half miles be-
low the Landing.

Continuing in the timber, and crossing Daniel High's field, and land
in possession of other claimants, we next enter on and cross Mr. Free-
man's enclosure, passing about 2,000 feet west of his store at Yolo
City ; thence reaching the south edge of the timber, ten miles south of
the landing, through Mr. Pendergast's land, passing about 800 feet west
of his residence.

From the south edge of the timber, and until after crossing Willow
slough, 4.60 miles below, the line passes through a succession of small
farms subjected to a high state of cultivation, and evincing from the
exuberant growth of the different descriptions of cereals, a superior
quality of soil.

Between the slough and the termination of this tangent there is but
one mile of unenclosed ground crossed, which extends from a short dis-
tance below the slough to Hutchinson & Green's new enclosed field, 1,200
feet south of a large water channel called Dry Slough.

Extending 4,200 feet over this enclosure, the north line of the "Large
Farm" is reached at the Sacramento city and Clear Lake road ; cross-
ing which, and enterirg the field, the tangent point is reached 1,146
feet south of another large slough. Here a deflection is made to the
west, on a curve of 10.712 feet radius, for 800 feet, meeting with another
straight line, 16.90 miles in length, extending to the outlying ridge at
the south edge of the Sacramento Valley, and near to the point of the
Yaca Hills.

Three thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight feet from the com-
mencement of this tangent, and 43.78 miles from the crossing on Feath-
er river, the north bank of Putah creek is reached, about 500 feet below
Hall's ford. Following the location, and crossing the creek from Yolo

into Salano county, the line first enters upon and crosses a corner of
Judge Curry's land, on the Yaca Grant : thence entering Mr. Stephen-
son's field on the Wolfskill Grant, through which it continues 5,800
feet, and again enters on and extends 1.78 miles over open ground on
the Yaca Grant, to the line between Townships 7 and 8 N., Range 1
E. ; passing east of the oak grove south of Putah. Entering Mr.
Foward's field, at the township line, we continue through different en-
closures 2.14 miles ; passing in front of the school house in Roderick's
field, and crossing Mr. Zumalt's land west of his house, the open
plain is reached a half mile west of Sylvey's Hotel, on the Telegraph
road.

From Zumalt's the location is over unenclosed lands for about
seven and a quarter miles, crossing the Telegraph road about three
miles westerly of Sylvey's, and the lit. Diablo Meridian two
and one-third miles south of the north line of township six north.
Then entering and continuing through cultivated fields three and a
quarter miles, crossing the Arroyo on Mr. Hoyte's land, west of his
residence, and emerging again on to open ground at the base of the
sloping ridge at the south edge of the Sacramento Yalley, the location
is continued with the ridge, ascending from the valley, until the sum-
mit elevation between that and Suisun Yalley is attained, at a depres-
sion in the outlying ridge before mentioned.

The line then deflects to the west for 800 feet, on a curve of 11.460
feet radius, and then assuming a direct course for 4.800 feet, descends
and crosses a small valley intermediate of the outlying range and the
Yaca Hills : thence curving to the west for 4,200 feet, with a radius of
7,640 feet, and turning the eastern point of the Yaca Hills, in Mr. Dut-
ton's field, the final tangent, extending to the temporary terminal point
between Suisun City and Fairfield is reached. The length of this
direct line is 5.18 miles, a greater portion of which distance is over
farms lying in the valley. Thus in a distance of sixty-seven miles from
the crossing of Feather river, by the line of location, tide water at
Suisun Bay is reached.

ADVANTAGES OF LOCATION BY KNIGHT'S LANDING-
COMPARED WITH ROUTE BY SMITH'S FERRY.
On a comparison of notes by the above routes, which may be desig-
nated the upper and lower, some of the more important considerations
favoring the latter may be briefly enumerated.

1st — It is more direct. The distance from the bank of Feather river
via Knight's Landing to station between Suisim City and Fairfield is,
by location, 67 miles. Distance between same points by Smith's Ferry
route 68.20 miles. Difference in favor of lower route 1.20 miles, sav-
ing in ordinary construction alone, other characteristics assumed as
equal, about $48,000, besides an annual saving in the working expenses,
wear and tear of track and machinery, due to the decreased length of
road.

2d — The extent of low ground to be crossed, requiring piling, trestle
work or heavy embankments, is less by the lower than by the upper
route, which will materially decrease the cost of construction, and less
endanger the road being injured or carried away by high water.

By referring to the estimates, it will be seen that there was required
to cross the low ground north of the Sacramento, 18 ,150 lineal feet of
trestle work, at a cost of $181,500. On the second Division south of
the river, there was estimated 5,620 feet of trestle work to cross the
low lands at Sycamore slough, costing $56,200. Bridge at Sycamore
slough $7,200 ; making a total of $224,900.

The extent of low ground to be crossed on the lower route, north of
the Sacramento, being but little more than that on the upper, north of
Smith's Ferry, would, as originally contemplated in construction, re-
quire a proportional increase in the amount of piling and trestle work.
But south of the Sacramento river, Sycamore slough and the low
ground bordering, being entirely avoided, much expensive and perisha-
ble work is obviated.

To guard against injurious results from high waters in the tule, and
to more thorougly protect your road, it is now contemplated by your
Company to reclaim the land subject to overflow, over which it passes.
The completion of this work will, as well as giving additional perman-
ence and security to the road superstructure reduce the amount required,
by substituting in lieu thereof, imperishable and less expensive em-
bankments of earth.

3d — The convenience of access to Knight's Landing at all seasons of
the year, from the extensive agricultural districts west of the Sacra-
mento, including the Clear Lake country, and that of numerous valleys
situated in the Coast Range, will, for Depot purposes., esential at the
river, more particularly for the transhipment of freights by the steam-
ers for the Upper Sacramento, make that favorably situated point of
much importance to your Company.

Another very important consideration, militating against the adop-

tion of the upper route, may be stated.

By a Legislative Act, passed April 24th, 1858, the State grants to
the Railroad Company, for the benefit of, and to aid in constructing
their road, one half mile of the water front at the lower terminus, at
Napa Bay. Also one half of all the swamp and overflowed lands, over
which said road shall be constructed ; lying within the following bounda-
ries, to -wit : In the county of Sutter, between the mouth or sink of
Butte creek, and the junction of the Sacramento and Feather rivers ;
and in Yolo and Colusi counties, between the town of Colusi and
Knight's Landing in Yolo county. A conditional proviso to said land
grant is, that the Railroad Company shall, at their own cost and ex-
pense, reclaim from overflow, the entire body of such described lands
•passed over by their line of road, in the counties aforesaid.

An additional proviso, also, is to the effect, that the total amount of
swamp and overflowed lands granted shall not, in the aggregate, exceed
six hundred and forty acres of such lands, for each mile in length of
said road. Under the provisions of this Act, the Railroad Company's
quota of land will amount to between 58,000 and 60,000 acres.

It is estimated that the body of swamp and overflowed lands in the
designated boundaries in Sutter county, is equal to about six townships,
or 140,000 acres ; the reclamation of which, alone, will give to the
Company all the lands to which they will be entitled under the pro-
visions of this Act.

About six miles below the town of Colusi, a large slough puts out
from the Sacramento river, and forms a channel through which when
the river is high, a great body of water is ejected on to the tule, and
surrounding low lands in Sutter county.

Butte creek, a formidable stream during the heavy rains and melting
snows in the mountains, also discharges into this tule, west of the
Buttes, and in close proximity to the slough before mentioned ; those
are the two principal conduits, tending to overflow or "fill the tule" as
it is termed ; though during freshets whsn Feather river rises in ad-
vance of the Sacramento and Butte creek, it backs up through differ-
ent sloughs having their outlet into it near the junction of the rivers,
and fills the lower tule before there is any great amount of water on
the upper tule near the Buttes. Other sloughs of minor importance,
leading both from the Sacramento and Feather rivers, tend to augment
the quantity of water periodically discharged into the basin of this
tule.

The body of swamp and overflowed lands described in the Act, in

Colusi and Yolo counties, west of the Sacramento, lies directly oppo-
site to that in Sutter county, over which your road passes.

Sycamore slough, with its deep channel and low banks, makes out
from the river nearly opposite the head of the large slough before
mentioned on the east side of the river, and after a serpentine course
of forty or fifty miles through the lands designated, again returns to
the river, immediately above Knight's Landing, forming intermediate
of its channel and the river, the tract of country known as Grand
Island. This slough annually overflows its banks and inundates the
low grounds through which it courses, to a depth of from eight to
twelve feet.

Cache creek frequently overflows its northern bank above Cacheville,
the water from which finds an outlet into the river through Sycamore
slough. It also forms the natural drain for the entire country west of it,
comprising the eastern slope of the Coast Range from Cache creek north,
for twenty-five or thirty miles.

To have crossed the river at Smith's Ferry would, under the Act,
have subjected your Company to reclaim this large body of land, which
is entirely avoided by the lower route, and would, if at all practicable,
involve the expenditure of an amount of money and labor not justify-
ing the undertaking, and add nothing to the quantity to which you will
be entitled under the Act.

A great, if not insurmountable difficulty that would attend the re-
clamation west of the Sacramento in connection with that on the east
side, would be to confine the water, when swollen by freshets, within
its banks ; to do this levees, composed of massive embankments of
earth would be required along both banks of the river, extending from
above the heads of those sloughs to the confluence of the Sacramento
with Feather river. But by permitting a portion of the water to flow
through^the channel of Sycamore slough, the expense and difficulty of
re-claiming the lands east of the river will be comparatively light.

FOURTH DIVISON— FROM SUISUN TO VALLEJO.

An early completion of your road to the navigable water of
Suisun Bay, over which at all seasons of the year, unobstructed
and speedy communication by steamers is had with San Francisco,
thus avoiding the tedious delays incidental to travel and navi-
gation on the Sacramento and Feather rivers, being a considera-

tion of primary importance, demanded by the public, and grati-
fying to those more immediately interested in its accomplishment ;
hence the energy and perseverance of the Contractor, Mr. Haskin, has
been devoted to the advancement of that portion of the road towards
completion before prosecuting work on the lower Division, which can
well remain in abeyance for another season. Under these considera-
tions no farther instrumental examinations have yet been made of the
section of country comprised in the 4th Division, lying between Suisun
Valley and the ultimate termination of your road at Vallejo, with the
view to improve, if possible, the location across the Suscol Hills. But
from reliable information as to the character of soil and facility of
crossing the marsh ground westerly of Suisun City, and from personal
observation, since completing the preliminary survey, of other portions
of the Suscol Range, 1 cannot doubt but that a change may be made in
the route, that will effect a saving in a distance of from one and a half to
two and a half miles, without increasing the grades, and at the same time
with no additional cost in construction beyond the former estimate.

A small stream called Sulphur creek, forms in the Range immediately
under the summit easterly of the American Canon, and extending in a
south easterly direction, about four miles, through an open valley, dis-
charges its water into Suisun Bay, about three miles above Benicia.
This creek and valley, lying parallel with the general course of the
Range, separates it into two distinct ridges ; one of which on subsid-
ing, merges into the cross range of hills back of Benicia, and the other
terminates north of the creek, and about four miles above that place.
About one mile above the point of the latter ridge there is a depres-
sion, on the westerly side of which a deep ravine forms, and runs at a
right angle from the ridge into Sulphur creek. Easterly of the de-
pression on a bench of the hill, another open ravine originates, which
gradually descends the slope of the hill towards Green Valley, in a
northerly direction, passing back of the Suisun Bluffs on the Telegraph
road below the valley.

There are two routes either of which if found to be practicable,
would reduce the length of road.

The first, and more direct would be, to continue directly across the
marsh from Suisun City until reaching the sloping ground from the
Suscol Range, west of Green Valley ; then curving to the south and
ascending with a maximum grade into and up the ravine spoken of, to
the depression in the eastern spur of the ridge. From this point you
would again curve to the west, cross the depression, and descend the

ravine west of it to Sulphur creek, which would be crossed at or near
the Government Corral, about three miles back of Benicia. The
western spur of the ridge, on line between this point and the terminus
at Vallejo, being low, there would be no serious difficulty in passing it
with moderate grades.

The other route, which should be examined, after crossing the marsh
ground from Suisun City, would continue along the margin of the Bay,
passing under the Bluff, and near the Telegraph road, until the point
of the eastern spur of the Range could be reached ; then curving to
the west, and turning the point into the valley of Sulphur creek, up
which it would lead until intersecting the former route indicated, near
the Government Corral.

The first of these routes if found practicable, would be the most di-
rect, being about two and a half miles less in distance from Suisun City
to Vallejo, than by that through Green Valley Canon. The grades, I
imagine, would be more favorable, and the cost of construction, inci-
dental to decreased distance and extent of heavy work, less.

The most expensive portion of this route to construct a road over,
would be found at the crossing of the eastern spar of the range into,
and across Sulphur Creek Valley. Immediately at the depression in
the ridge, a short tunnel, (say 1000 feet in length) might be required to
avoid deep excavation ; and in crossing the valley a high embankment,
or trustle work, would be necessary.

By the last route suggested, although distance would not be dimin-
ished to a great extent, but by passing around the point of the eastern
ridge, into and over the valley, the grades would be very materially
reduced, as would also the cost of construction. The heaviest work on
this route would occur in crossing the western ridge, which would con-
sist of deep cutting, for two or three thousand feet, but no tunneling
would be required.

Should this route be found the most practicable, and sufficient in-
ducements offer, I suppose there would be no difficulty in ex-
tending a branch either from this ridge, or from the point of the
ridge east of Sulphur creek, into Benicia.

GRADES, &c.

Without entering into the minutia of estimates, established grades,
etc., I would observe that the section of country traversed on the line

<r^

25 28

of location by Knight's Landing, from Marysville to Suisun Valley,
presenting in general a more uniform surface, adaptable to a cheap
construction of road over, than the route by Smith's Ferry, the former
estimates for grading, bridging, etc., I consider ample to cover those
expenditures. The grades in general are similarly light and uniform.

On the former location, the maximum grade north of Suisun Valley,
occurred in ascending from that valley to the summit of the Vaca
Sills, which was a continuous ascent of twenty-five feet per mile for
thirteen thousand feet. By changing the location, and turning the
point of those hills, the maximum ascending northward, has been re-
duced to twenty-two feet per mile, for ten thousand five hundred feet,
which occurs in two separate gradients, with a level of four thousand
"five hundred feet interveining.

To facilitate the construction of the road it has been considered ad-
visable in many places, where it would not conflict with permanent
structures, to make a temporary reduction of the higher embankments ;
contemplating, eventually, after it is equipped and in running order,
to transport ballasting, and raise it to the ultimate grades established.
This can be accomplished without seriously affecting the working of
the road, and at a much less cost for ballasting than it could be pro-
cured for, until the facilities of transport will admit of its being brought
from a distance.

PROGRESS OF WORK.

Those that have not hitherto been immediately interested in, or are
unaccustomed to building railroads, can form no adequate conception
of the obstacles to contend against, and the amount of time and labor
necessary, even after the preliminary financial arrangements are per-
fected, and work commenced, to complete a line of railroad of any .con-
siderable extent.

The construction of such roads in the older and more populous At-
lantic States, where the inducements to embark in enterprises of that
-kind meets with so much encouragement, though not evincing returns
for the outlay of capital at all to be compared with what your road
may:be expected to yield on completion, and where the facilities of
procuring. labor and eapital is comparatively, far superior to what is
offered in : C alif orni.a, is attended with muoh delay, no t contemplated.at
&e ifieipiency of 'the undertaking.
4

The amount of individual subscriptions, and corporate securities to
be obtained on the Pacific Coast, to aid in the completion of a work of
character and magnitude, similar to that of the San Francisco and
Marysville Railroad, will go but a short distance towards accomplish-
ing the object ; the bulk of capital requisite to insure its completion
and equipment, must necessarily be obtained from abroad, by the dis-
posal of Bonds of the Company ; and as much time is unavoidably
consumed in which to favorably negotiate with foreign capitalists, the
progress of the work is retarded.

With reference to your road, in particular, the favorable advantages
to be given to the city of Marysville at its northern terminus, for com-
manding the mountain and Upper Sacramento trade, on completion of
the work, has insited to envy and emulation its neighbor, the more opu-
lent, though less advantageously situated "City of the Plains."

The influences that have been brought to bear by residents of Sacra-
mento city, against the progress of your enterprize have been felt,
though they have not been so virulent as to stay its onward course to-
wards completion.

Another opposing interest, identified directly with the future pros-
perity of Sacramento city, you are aware, has been exerted through
the agency of a few hired minions — tools in the hands of their em-
ployers, to check the advancement of your commendable undertaking.
With an unrelenting disposition, these emissaries have endeavored, by
chicanery and stratagem, to throw every obstacle in the way which
would tend to cripple your resources, and retard the progress of the
work. Signally failing in their first effort to invalidate your County
subscriptions, and receiving for their futile efforts, a just and well
merited rebuke from the highest tribunal in our State, they next at-
tempt to impare the value of those subscriptions, legally and in good
faith made upon the books of your Company, to aid in the construction
of your road. That they succeeded for a time in checking operations
on the work, to the serious injury of the Contractor, cannot be denied ;
but they had not the power to control its future destiny.

Laboring under all the disadvantages incidental to remote situation
and circumstances, there are but few roids of similar extent, now com-
pleted in the United States, that progressed faster, or with more cer-
tainty of being completed than does yours ; though doubtless there are
some companies in the Atlantic States, that were so fortunately circum-
stanced, by large cash subscriptions to their capital stock before com-
mencing work, as to enable them, uninterrupted, to progress with ancl

complete their respective lines of road with more expedition than with
which we are proceeding ; but as before stated, thera are but few, and
they are exceptions.

In referring- to our own State, though internal improvements of all
kinds, within its borders are yet in a incipient condition, I would re-
mark, that the first and only railroad completed was the "Sacramento
Valley" — 22 miles in length, extending in an easterly direction, from
Sacramento city to Folsotn.

This Company organized in 1852, and aided by San Francisco capi-
tal, the work was completed in 1856.

About the same time the Sacramento Valley Company organized, the
"Pacific and Atlantic Company'7 was incorporated, to extend a road
from San Francisco to San Jose, (48 miles) near the head of San Fran-
cisco Bay.

Surveys of the route were made and favorable report published, but
failing to obtain the capital necessary to commence the work, for the
time it remained in statu quo. It was attempted to be revived in 1855,
but again the Company were doomed to disappointment. Within the
last month a reorganization of the Company has been effected, with
flattering prospects, and I hope, with better success.

The next organization in order was the "Marysville and Benicia77
Railroad Company ; incorporated also, in 1852, and designed to con-
nect the City of Marysville by rail, with tide water. Mr. Lewis, the
locating Engineer, after completing the surveys in the Spring of 1853,
made a very flattering report, but the time was not ripe for an under-
taking of that magnitude in our young State, and the company long
since ceased to exist.

In 1856, the ''Sacramento and Benicia77 Company was organized —
surveys and reports made, since which, nothing further has been
done towards commencing to build the road, and their charter has ex-
pired by limitation.

In the Spring of 1857, the "California Central'7 Company was organ-
ized, to extend a road from Folsom to the city of Marysville, a distance
of about forty-two miles.

This Company is in fact, although a seperate organization, identical
with and promoted by the Sacramento Valley Company.

On perfecting its organization, I am informed, a contract was entered
into between the Company and C. L. Wilson & Co., under which
Wilson & Co., were to complete the road within thirty months from
the date thereof.

With what speed the work is progressing I am personally unable to
say ; but from the most favorable reports, it will yet be a length of
time before the road is completed.

In October 1857, a final organization of the "San Francisco and
Marvsville" Railroad Company was made ; immediaiely after which, I
proceeded to make the preliminary surveys between the city of Marys?
ville and Vallejo.

In August 1858, your Company entered into a contract with Mr.
Haskin for building and equipping the entire road, in manner as con-
templated in my former report. The length of time given, within which
Mr. Haskin is to perfect his contract, being four years from the date
thereof.

Under this contract grading was immediately commenced on the 1st
Divison, between Feather river and the Tule ; three miles were comple-
ted and the fourth and fifth in a forward condition, when the work was
temporarily suspended, but was resumed in the fall after the rains had
rendered the ground in a condition suitable for working advantage-
ously.

Early in the Spring of 1859, the first five miles of your road, with the
■exception of some trimming up of banks, was ready for the superstruc-
ture and iron. This, though forming but a small portion of the work
requisite to complete your projected enterprise, was a start in the right
direction towards the building of a railroad that bids fair, from its superi-
or location geographically considered.(extending as it were directly from
the commercial emporium of the Pacific, on the Bay on San Francisco,
through the most productive agricultural portion of our fair and pros-
perous State, to the base of the snow-capped Sierras, which forms its
eastern border, and annually yields to its hardy population millions of
inexhaustible golden treasures to be disseminated throughout and enrich
the world,) in addition to commanding a trade not to be equaled by
any other line of road that can be constructed in the State, to form a
link in the Great Road contemplated to connect the surging waves of
the Atlantic with the more placid waters of the Pacific.

By the Legislative enactment granting to the Railroad Company,
-conditionally, certain swamp and overflowed lands, it was considered to
be to the better interest of your Company to dispense with much of the
.temporary and expensive trestle work and piling, hitherto contempla-
ted at the crossing of the tule and low grounds adjacent thereto, and
substitute in lieu thereof, imperishable embankments of earth, elevated

sufficiently above the highest water to prevent overflow in crossing that
character of ground, adopting only a sufficient extent of the former
description of structure to pass the volume of water that may be ex-
pected to flow through the channel, after those lands have been re-
claimed.

It had heretofore been imagined that in the tule, owing to the depth.and
peculiarly soft and yielding nature of the light soil composing it, caused
by water lying upon and covering it nearly the entire year, piling, to
the depth of 20 or 30 feet, would be absolutely necessary to support
any description of structure intended to be built over it. But upon
examining the ground at different points along the contemplated road-
way in crossing, it was found, afte/- sinking to the depth of three or
four feet, through a light blue clay or loam underlying the roots of the
tule, that this strata rested upou a sub stratum of cement or soft rock, of
a density practically impenetrable.

The soil overlying the cement in the basin of the tule being of an
impervious and tenacious character — qualities under the circumstances
which commended it to form a good and durable embankment, it was
determinated upon to do away with as much timber work as possible in
crossing, and substitute embankments of earth, of sufficient dimensions
to be above the overflow, and resist abrasion on the sides of the bank
from the action of water.

The grade was consequently placed about thirteen feet above the bed
of the tule — which is about five feet higher than usual overflows, and
the width and slopes of banks increased, the former three feet, the
latter two feet horizontal to one foot vertical, which makes a base of
over sixty feet. To prevent seapage under the banks, that might effect
the body of the road, the precaution was also taken to cut two muck
ditches, eight feet apart, from centre to centre, and two feet deep.
These ditches will be extended on either side of the centre alignment
of road, under the embankment, and be refilled and packed with the
most impervious material, with which, in conjunction, the core of the
bank will be brought to the required grade. In the completion of this
embankment across the tule is comprised the most costly portion of the
grading between Marysville and Suisun Bay.

In October last there was finished one-and a-third miles of this heavy
work at a cost of $48,316 70.

There is yet required two and three-quarter miles of embankment, of
i a similar character, to connect the two portions finished, which will
i complete the expensive work in crossing the tule tothe Sacramento river.

I would observe that during the present Spring the water in the tule
has been, and is yet, at a high stage, being at one time within five feet
of the top of the banks ; yet on examining the work last week, I find
they were not in the least injured by the action of the water ; which
is conclusive of their permanency, even should drainage not be effect-
ed as soon as contemplated.

Last week, sub-contractors, Bunting, Watson & Co., and T. J. Sher-
wood, completed their respective contracts for grading on the first
Division. The extent of the former's work was five miles. Sherwood
finished two and three quarter miles. Nelson & Co., have about three-
quarters of a mile of their work to complete, connecting with the.
heavy embankment in the tule, which they will doubtless finish- this
month. This comprises the extent of work now under contract on
this Division.

There will yet remain a fraction over seven miles to finish the entire
grading from Feather river to the Sacramento — two and three quarter
miles of which, as before stated, embraces work in the tule that cannot
be done until the water subsides.

On the second Division, for the grading of which James O'Brien has
the sub-contract — to be completed by the first of July next, the work
is being pushed forward with an energy that justifies the assertion that
he will comply with his contract.

He has already finished four miles between Knight's Landing and
Cache creek, and two miles on the adobe plains notth of Putah creek ;
to which point he removed his forces, in order to finish up that portion
before the ground became to dry to work to advantage.

Passing south from O'Brien's, we come next to the work of Messrs.
Cole & Hickock, sub contractors for grading the third Division, extend-
ing in Solano county, from Putah creek to tidewater at cuisun Bay,
twenty three and a quarter miles.

Their limitation of time in which to finish expires also, on the first
of July next. They feel sanguine of getting through by the middle of
June at farthest, which from the amount already done, and from the
force at present employed 1 can see no reason to doubt. They hav(
adopted a plan of reletting to small working parties, in short sections ;
while in person they prosecute other portions of the work with a large
force.

They commenced operations three miles north of Fairfield, and for
the present are extending north towards Putah. All of the heaviest
work on their Division, which is at the Vaca Hills, ascending out of

^Suisun Valley, has been completed. They have broken ground on
thirteen mile? of road— have finished up eight, and partially finished
the balance of thirteen miles.

I have thu-f given in a succinct manner the progress of grading on
your road. We have now thirty one of the sixty-seven and a half
miles interveining between the city of Marysville, and tide water at
Suisun Bay, graded, ready for crossties ; and by the first of next July,
I have no doubt but the amount to grade will be reduced to seven and
a half miles, which lies north of the Sacramento river.

It is contemplated by Mr. Haskin, so soon as the grading is finished,
to commence on the bridges and superstructure work. To complete
this 'description of to k will necessarily consume some time. How-
ever, I can see nothing to prevent its being progressed with as fast as
iron for the track arrives. So it may with much confidence be expec-
ted, that ere another year rolls around, your road will be in successful
operation, from Marysville to the navigable waters of Suisun Bay.

FENCING, CATTLE GUARDS, &c.

In my former report no estimate was made for cattle guards and
"fencing, along the line of road : contemplating when it was finished,
the material for that purpose could be procured and transported over
it at a reduction of cost, to be paid for from the earnings of the road
when in operation.

At that time also, there was less necessity evinced for fencing ; for
nearly the entire extent of country traversed was an open plain. But
now, owing to the surprising increase of population, the section of
country through which we pass after crossing to the south side of the
Sacramento, is, with hut few exceptions, a continuous succession of cul-
tivated fields or grazing pastures.

Those portions of the completed grade now exposed, form favorite
resorts or play grounds for stock of all kinds, and is becoming much
despoiled by their depredations, and tramping over it.

It will be found absolutely necessary, for the protection of the road
•and travel over it, and to shield your Company against damages which
woule arise from the destruction of stock, to enclose the entire line of
road with substantial fences, provided with necessary guards at the
paints of crossing.

It cannot be expected, where passing through fields, the proprietors
should be put to the expense of enclosing the track ; this is a matter
of cost that should justly be borne by the Company I have estimated
-the cost of fencing on both sides of the road, including cattle guards,
at an average of $1,400 per mile in length of road, and trust, from
the necessity shown, some provision will be made by your Board in
regard to fencing.

RECLAMATION OF OVERFLOWED LANDS.

Sufficient instrumental measurements have not as yet been had, on
which to base an estimate of the probable cost to thoroughly reclaim
the swamp lands over which we pass, in Putter county ; but from what
examination has been made, in approximation, I would suppose the
cost at the utmost, will not exceed $80,000.

The last Legislature extended the time in which the Company are
required to have their lands reclaimed, for one year, from the 24th day
of last month. This was but an act of simple justice, as the overflow-
ed lands belonging to the State have not yet been segregated from
lands belonging to the United States, and had your Company complied
with- your part of the contract, the State could not, nor cannot until
that partition is made by the General Government, set apart to the
JEtailroad Company, one foot of the lands reclaimed.

No definite plan has yet matured by which to reclaim those lands i
but the one most likely to be adopted will be to extend a levee, with
the necessary dams or bulkheads, from a projecting spur of the Buttes,-
below Esquire Hamblin's farm, across the low ground below the sink
of Butte creek, to the bend (opposite Shelton's cabin) in the Big Slough,
from the Sacramento river. Then, by placing a dam across the slough,
at the bend, and leveeing up the south bank, with a light embankment,
to its outlet from the river, above Madam Lobier's house, it will effectu-
ally cut off the outlet from the creek and river on to the tule, south of
the levee. The excavation made to form the portion of the main em-
bankment between Butte creek and the slough, will form a channel
from the creek into the slough north of the levee. The length of prin-
cipal levee will be one and a quarter miles ; the other three quarters of
a mile. Embankments will also be raised wherever required below the
levee, on the Sacramento, and on Feather river. To perfect drainage,
a channel should be opened through the tule from the slough near the

junction of the rivers, and the water drained through its outlet into
the Sacramento. Then, with the necessary valve-gates to prevent back
water, when at such a stage in the river as to be above the outlet, the
reclamation will be perfect.

BRANCH ROADS— EXTENSIONS AND CONNECTIONS.

As before stated, the great public benefit to be derived by an early
completion of your road from Marysville to the navigable waters of
-Suisun Bay, in connection with the many advantages it would give to
your .Company, has prudently induced the means at present at the dis-
posal of the contractor, to be expended on the construction and equip-
ment of that portion of the road.

The location selected for a depot on the line, between Suisun City
_and -Fairfield, is eligibly suited for that purpose, being on the main
land and immediately at the margin of the marsh ground bordering
the Bay. A liberal donation of land at that point has been made to
your Company for depot purposes, by Captain Waterman, proprietor
of the town site of Fairfield.

Suisun City is situated at the head of an estuary or slough, connect-
ing with the open water in Suisun Bay, about one and a-half miles be-
low. The channel up this slough is narrow and crooked, and at low
tide the water is so shallow that none other but vessels of light draft
can reach the wharf. In addition to this, the town is so compactly
built up, on the small island or rising ground in the marsh, upon which
it stands, that the facilities afforded for approaching the wharf and
-transacting the business your road will draw, are not as good as found
a short distance below. At "Swan's Landing," at the outlet from the
slough, the channel opens out to a good width, with sufficient water at
the lowest tide, to float the lagest steamers plying on the Sacramento
river. From this point to San Francisco, a distance of between forty
and forty-five miles, there would be no obstructions to impede naviga-
tion at any time ; and with boats adapted to the trade the run can be
made, from wharf to wharf, in two and a half or three hours at farthest-
Thus, when the Railroad is finished to Suisun Bay, five hours will suf-
fice to reach San Francisco from Marysville.

The superior facilities afforded for the approach of large class steam-
ers to Swan's Landing, and the inducements proffered by Messrs..
5

Swan & McMurtry, owners of the adjoining lands, to make connection
there, would indicate it the most favorable point to reach the water
from the main line ; but whichever of those paints may hereafter be
determined upon will be reached from the Depot, by a short branch or
temporary track, extended across the marsh ground, which can be con-
structed without any difficulty, and at a nominal cost.

In my former report, I called the attention of your Company to the
practicability and importance of connecting with Sacramento City by
a Branch road, from the most direct point on the line of your road, at
or near Putah creek.

The nearest point of approach to Sacramento City from your road, is
at the crossing of the Clear Lake Road, about two miles north of Pu-
tah, and, by direct line, about 18 miles, in a nearly due west direction
from Sacramento City. On this line I imagine there would be no
difficulty in building a road at a cheap figure. There would be no
streams to cross in reaching the river ; the principal work in grading
would be at the crossing of the tule back of Washington, on the river
opposite Sacramento City.

This belt of tule is about four miles wide, but the bed of it being
several feet higher than that crossed on your road and in Sutter county,
the work would not be so expensive. Near to where a direct line
would cross, there is now constructed over the tule, a turnpike or toll
road, composed of material excavated along its sides, and formed into
an embankment or road bed. This embankment was built several
years ago, and I understand, stands well against the action of high
water, though the road-way not being sufficiently elevated above its sur-
face, is sometimes rendered impassable.

A Branch extended from your road to Sacramento city, in addition
to its being a paying investment, would accommodate and tend to con-
ciliate her interests, and add largely to the business of the San Fran-
cisco and Marysville road. The reasons are so multifarious, and the
importance of forming this connection, so obvious, that nothing farther
than the suggestions I have offered relative to this matter, is deemed
necessary.

On completing the lower Division of your road, at whatever point
it may enter Napa Valley, there doubtless will be a road connecting
with it and extending up the valley to Napa City ; thence through the
rich and populous valleys of Sonoma and Petaluma, lying to the north
of San Pablo Bay. This road would draw to its support in addition

to the business of these valleys, the entire trade of the Kussian river
country.

The pre-eminent facilities this connection will afford to the farmers
in the counties north of the Bay, including Napa. Sonoma, Marin and
Mendocino, to reach a ready and better market than heretofore afford-
ed, in the interior of the State, for the disposal of their products will
not be long overlooked.

I would while on this subject, call your attention to the feasibility of
another important extension, or connection that can, and I doubt not,
will be made with your road after its completion to the terminus, near
Vallejo ; and as this project should more particularly interest the citi-
zens and capitalists of San Francisco, and those of the counties of
Contra Costa and Alameda, lying east of, and fronting on the Bay of
San Francisco, and identify their interests with yours, I make this sug-
gestion chiefly for their consideration.

I allude to the practicability of constructing a railroad from Yerba
Buena or Goat Island, out to the main land, above Oakland ; and
from there extending north, along the eastern side of the Bay, in Ala-
meda and Contra Costa counties — passing close under the slope of the
hills back of the town of San Pablo, and reaching the entrance to the
straits of Carquines, opposite your contemplated Depot, at the entrance
to Napa Bay. The length of this line I do not suppose would exceed
twenty-five miles ; and from information obtained of those conversant
with the country proposed to be passed over, I would not only consid-
er the route practicable, but eminently adapted for the cheap construc-
tion of a road over.

Goat Island is situated in San Francisco Bay, directly opposite, and
but a few hundred yards from the wharfs at San Francisco. Interme-
diate of the wharfs and Island, is the channel, and anchorage ground
for the shipping in the harbor. East of the Island, and extending back
to the main land, the water is shoal. The Charts of Captain Binggold
represent this portion of the Bay to be composed of mud flats, with
shallow soundings. I am informed the deepest water on the flats at
high tide, is only from 10 to 12 feet. If this should prove to be the
case, there would be no difficulty in approaching the Island from the
main land with a line of rails, either by piling, or over a solid road-
bed, composed of rock necessarily excavated from the Island in re-
ducing it to the required grade for Depot purposes. By adopting the
latter method, which would undoubtedly be the more preferable and

permanent, the current at the ebb and flow of the tide, would be con-
fined to the channel, and tend to carry off the deposit accumulating at
the wharfs in San Francisco, which has recently created so much
contention.

The width across the straits of Caquines, opposite your intended
Depot, is probably one-half mile, and the deepest soundings indicate
about twelve fathoms of water. It would not be impossible, though
owing to the depth of water, an expensive undertaking to erect a
bridge connecting the two shores ; but a connection can readily be
formed, as is common on a number of roads in the Atlantic States,
through the means of steam ferry-boats, designed for the purpose, and
constructed so that the Express and Baggage Cars of a railroad train
can be run from the road on to a trackway on the boat, — transported
to the opposite side of the stream, and rolled from the boat to the
track in continuance of the line of road, with but little delay in tran-
sit.

I have thus briefly shown what might be done to more directly iden-
tify the interests of San Francisco with those of your Company, by
the completion of a line of road which is the only direct one practica-
ble, by which the centre, and eastern border of our State can be reached
from her harbor. The advantages to be derived from such a connec-
tion is not necessary to comment upon at this time.

For all the purposes of convenience and commerce, without subject-
ing to the many accidents and annoyances common where railroads ex-
tend into the heart of large cities, a more suitable place for Depot
purposes, to accommodate the interests of San Francisco, could not be se-
lected than Goat Island ; which is well adapted to form the terminus
and radiating point for two great lines of Railroad; one of which, ex-
tending in a north-easterly direction, and traversing the richest agri-
cultural porition of our State, would penetrate the more populous min-
ing districts, and command a trade unequaled by any other road that
could be devised, or projected in the State ; the other, extended in a
south-easterly direction, by the way of Oakland and Alvarado, along
the southern projection of the Bay, and through the productive valleys
of Santa Clara, and more remote counties, would draw to its support
a trade that would undoubtedly justify the construction, and obviate
the necessity of the more costly proposed road through San Mateo
county, west of the Bay, which is designed to extend from San Fran-
cisco the valley of San Jose.

WAY-STATIONS.

In the estimates contained in my former report, I contemplated but
six way-stations on the line between Marysville and Vallejo, which was
thought at that time, to be a sufficient number to accommodate the way
trafic. But owing to the rapid settlement that has taken place in the
counties passed through, and that of a character which will tend ma-
terially to augment the way business heretofore considered, it will be
necessary, to better accommodate the interests of the farmers along
the line in the shipment of their produce, and receiving their supplies,
and at the same time conduce to the interests of your Company, that
an additional number of stations should be established. Much compe-
tition exists amongst settlers along the road to secure location of sta-
tions upon their lands, and liberal donations of ground are proffered
to the Company for these purposes. Between Marysville and Knight's
Landing, two stations for the present will be sufficient. From the
Landing to Suisun, way business will now justify in placing them about
five miles apart.

BUSINESS PROSPECTS.

I do not consider it at all necessary at the present time, to prepare
an elaborate statement to show the character, and amount of business
it may be expected will be drawn to and transacted by your road on
its completion. In my former report, under this head I gave a plain
summary of facts and figures, which were then irrefutable; they now re-
quire no embellishment.

The estimates of annual receipts amounted to $1,952,878. From
this amount was deducted $636,570 25, the estimated annual expenses
for operating ; leaving as the nett annual earnings of the road, for
transportation $1,316,307 75 — equivalent to forty five per cent., per
year, interest on the estimated cost of road, equipment and buildings,
amounting in the aggregate to $2,905,026 94.

It is gratifying to be enabled to state, that as large as the business
that would be drawn to and transacted over your road then appeared
to be, and as favorable as the returns to be anticipated were shown
would be, they would fall short of what would now be considered a
fair computation of receipts for transportation, and dividends to stock-
holders on those receipts.

Owing to the rapid influx within the last two years into the section
of country tributary to your road west of the Sacramento river, of a
population devoted exclusively to agricultural pursuits, the local traffic
will be materially increased.

"Within this time, the increase of trade between San Francisco and
Suisun City, caused by the accession to the farming interest in the
numerous productive and expansive valleys lying north and west of
Suisun Bay, has been surprising ; and demanded in addition to the
numerous sailing vessels plying regularly between those points, farther
and more expeditious facilities for the transportation of freights and
passengers. To accommodate this trade, in addition to this sailing
fleet, a steamer now runs regularly between San Francisco and Suisun
City.

To supply the constant demand for fencing and building lumber
alone, in the valleys west of the Sacramento, which must be supplied
either from the mountains east of the river, or from the "Red Woods" on
the coast, will form no small item in the carrying trade of the road.

The large forest of oak timber on Cache creek, suitable only for fire
wood, and of but little value at home, will command from $12 to $15
per cord in San Francisco. A heavy downward business may be relied
on from this trade.

Other commodities of commence and trade than those hitherto cal-
culated upon, are constantly being developed upon the Pacific Coast,
from which it may be expected your road will derive much pecuniary
benefit.

The recent discoveries of fabulously rich and extended silver ranges
along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, has given an impetus and
direction to trade that will materially augment the business of the
road. The mining districs of California, as well as the cities and
towns in her valleys, are becoming depopulated in the great rush
for the new Eldorado in Utib Territory. This stampede is not local,
but general throughout the State, and concentric in its movements to-
wards the Washoe country, beyond the eastern border of the central
portion of the State. The consumption of the necessaries of life,
and the demand for tools, machinery &c. — which, in consideration of
the character of the mines will be very heavy, must be supplied from
San Francisco, and transported over the mountains by teams or pack
mules, and in return, the ore and mineral taken from the leads will be
forwarded to San Francisco for smelting and assay.

To reach Washoe Valley from that of the Sacramento, the most
favorable route to cross the Sierra is that by the Heaness Pass, (alluded
to in my former report, as being practicable for a Railroad,) which, as
will be seen by referring to the accompanying map, is in line between
Marysville and the former valley, and as the approaches vary but little
from a straight line, it is consequently the most direct.

A Turnpike road is now being constructed over this pass, by a Com-
pany organized for the purpose, connecting directly, the City of Marys-
ville with the Washoe and Carson Valley country. They are pushing
forward rapidly with the work, and contemplate having the road fin-
ished in July next ; when I am informed a semi-daily line of stages
will be put on the route by the California Stage Company, to run reg-
ularly from Virginia City to Marysville ■ and connecting with the
stages for Sacramento city, the trip will be made through to the latter
place in two days.

Every essential of superiority being attained on the completion of
this trans-mountain road, there can be no doubt but the principal
freighting and passenger business between California and Utah will
ibe transacted over it ; and as it will necessarily concentrate at Marys-
ville, en-route, it is no exaggeration for me to say, that the mass of this
travel and trade will legitimately belong to, and be controlled by your
road when finished.

In short, you possess all the requirements, and advantages in location
of road, to control the trade and travel between the Commercial Em-
porium of the Pacific and the central, northern, and eastern portions of
"the State.

Freight and passengers over your road from San Francisco, destined
for the extreme north, will, at Knight's Landing, be transferred to
steamers running in connection, and conveyed up the Sacramento to-
wards their final destination ; and vice versa.

Over the great thoroufares of travel radiating from Marysville, and
penetrating to the most distant mining camps in the Sierra, will be
transported the supplies, of whatever character demanded for use and
consumption by the large population devoted to mining and manufac-
turing in the mountains ; and in return, lumber, timber, ores, minerals,
etc., will be sent forward to the valley, and forwarded onward to San
Francisco over your road ; which will possess all the elements of great-
ness to be second to none other of like extent in the United States, in

amount of business transactions, and returns to stockholders on invest-
ments therein.

MAP OF CENTRAL CALIFORNIA.

The accompanying Map of Central California is designed to show the
routes of various Railroads projected, completed, or under construc-
tion in the State ; together with a proposed practical route by the Hen-
ness Pass, to cross the Sierra with a Railroad, in connection with a
Central Pacific road, extended to the waters of the Mississippi river,
by the Valley of the Humboldt, Salt Lake, and ValJey of the Platte.

The Map has been carefully prepared by Mr. J. G-. Rice, my Assis-
tant, from those of the State and Government surveys, and from other
reliable data. In the more important localities represented, to-wit :
the position of principal cities and towns within the State, and the
routes of proposed railroads to connect therewith, it can be relied on as
correct; but inadvertently, by heedlessly copying from Goddard's
-2d Edition of the State Map, the lower portion of Truckee river, and
Pyramid Lake, east of the State line, is incorrectly represented in lati-
tudinal position, though their relative positions to one another is nearly
correct. On my surveys in 1855, for a road from the "Lower -Crossing"
on Truckee to Camptonville, in Yuba county, via the Henness Pass, I
ascertained, if correct in my observations, the south end of Pyramid
Lake to be immediately north of the 40th parallel of latitude, as shown
on the more recent Editions of Goddard's, and other maps.

I have represented the altitude of the Henness Pass, as given by my
instruments, to be 6,550 feet, which I would observe, is several hundred
feet more than I ever heard it computed at by other parties, though I
.am not aware of an person except myself having extended levels over
it, or taken barometrical observations to ascertain the height.

The elevation of other passes shown on the Map are as repesented
by different authorities ; those on the Placerville route to Carson
Valley, are taken from Goddard's Map. Unaccountably, he has not
shown upon them, the altitude of Luther's Pass, on the east ridge
crossed by the Johnson cut-off road, though in his report to the Sur-
veyor General, after completing a survey of this route for an emigrant
road in 1855, he gives the altitude of the pass at 7,185 feet.

A glance at the map cannot but convince all unprejudiced minds,
that of the different routes represented, by which it is proposed to con-

uect San Francisco with the interior of the State, that occupied by the
San Francisco and Marysville Railroad stands pre-eminent.

PACIFIC RAILROAD— CENTRAL ROUTE.

This grand enterprise ; the construction of a Railroad between the
Pacific and Atlantic Coasts, has at length assumed a tangible form
before the country ; and bids fair to be accomplished.

About sixteen years ago, Col. Whiting suggested the idea, and
memorialized Congress to aid him in connecting the Orient and Occi-
dent of the American Continent wi h bands of iron. Since that time
the subject has been agitated in the Congressional Halls of our Gov-
ernment ; but for various reasons, until within the last month there has
been but little hope for the ultimate passage of a Bill through Congress,
to aid in the undertaking.

By a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives, at the
present session of Congress, a select Committee composed of fifteen
members, representing different States in the Union, was appointed, to
whom was referred so much of the President's Message as relates to a
Railroad to the Pacific. All bills, resolutions and memorials, relating
to the same subject were also referred to them, with instructions to re-
port by bill or otherwise.

The recent news, by the Overland Pony Express , states that the Com-
mittee immediately went to work, and as a preliminary question resolv-
ed to adopt but one of the four practical routes, presented for consid-
ation.

The four general lines examined were as follows :

1. The route by the Gila, through Arizona, near the 32d parallel of
latitude called the "Southern Route."

2. The route through Albuquerque, near 35th parallel.

3. The Emigrant or "Central Route," by the Platte Valley, through
Salt Lake Valley, and near the 41st parallel.

4. The "Northern Route," from St. Paul, to Puget Sound in Oregon.
After fully discussing the merits of these different routes in all their

bearings, the majority reported through Mr. Curtis of Iowa, adopting
the Central route.

The Committee set forth, that the best proof of the greater advan-
tages of the Central, over any other route, are found in the facts that
overland emigrants have adopted it ; the largest settlements exist on
6

it ; the gold mines of Pike's Peak, the "Washoe Silver mines, and the
forty thousand Mormons will be accommodated.

They further state, "a road is built to St. Joseph, Mo., 250 miles be-
yond the Mississippi, and from thence rails are now being laid towards
Fort Kearney." "We either should start from navigable waters or
from extreme points of our present Railroad system." "In consider-
ing the western terminus, we must look to a direct connection with San
Francisco by the rivers navigable for steamers which can carry at
least two hundred tons of freight."

They also refer to that portion of the report of the late Secretary
of War, Hon. Jeff. Davis, quoted by me in my former report, having
reference to the practicability and decreased distance by the route
down the south side of the Humboldt, reported by Col. Steptoe.

In the summer 1859, Captain Simpson of the Topographical Engineers,
made a further exploration of the country south of the Humboldt from
Carson Valley to Camp Floyd, and pronounces the route traversed,
about 300 miles shorter, and superior in every respect to the old route
down the Humboldt ; thus verifying the statements made by Col. Step-
toe, of the practicability and advantages of this route, which, I would
observe, is in direct continuation of the route leading up Truckee river
to the Henness Pass, at the summit of the Sierra Nevada.

Accompanying the majority report, Mr. Curtis also presented a Bill
to provide for constructing the road, with a recommendation that it
pass. The Bill, as reported, provides for a single Central road, be-
tween the 35th and 42d parallels of latitude, starting one branch from
St. Joseph, Mo., and another from Leavenworth or Sioux City, uniting
two hundred miles west of the Mississippi river ; thence through
Bridger's, or South Pass, near Salt Lake City, to the head of the Sac-
ramento river.

The dispatches further state — "the minority report refers to the great
advantages derived from two routes, ami advocates the extreme south-
ern route in addition to the Central route."

"The Senate will probably amend the Curtis Bill by an addition of
the minority bill, and the whole thing with both routes, may then pass."

As before stated, the prospects are now more flattering that the
Great Pacific Railroad will be built ; public necessity demands it, and
the recent decided action upon the floors of Congress, reechoing the
popular will of the nation, in favor of the general line of the Central
routes, argues well for its speedy commencement.

In view of that fact, and before concluding, I would briefly revert to

the action taken in its bearing upon the future prospects of your road
to form the Pacific terminal of that stupendous enterprise.

The Bill submitted through Mr. Curtis, if correctly reported, in de-
fining the location over the Central route, evidently follows the route
indicated by Lieut. Beckwith's surveys, from the valley of the Hum-
boldt to the head waters of the Sacramento river, and thence down to
Fort Reading, which is by the river about 500 miles from San Fran-
cisco.

In equating the distance by the four different routes examined, the
Committee compute the navigable waters of the Sacramento from San
Francisco at 267 miles. They also say, "we would look to a direct com-
munication with San Francisco by the rivers, navigable for steamers
which can carry at least two hundred tons of freight.

Now, they must either have had a wrong impression as to the extent
of navigable waters on the Sacramento for 200 ton steamers, or they
must have disregarded the freight capacity specified.

Owing to the deposits constantly accumulating in the rivers, it is not
now possible, except at a high stage of water, for steamers carrying
over 75 or 100 tons, to ascend further than Russian Bar, which is but
a few miles above Sacramento city, and about 130 miles above San
Francisco.

The small light draft steamers, plying on the Sacramento and Feath-
er river above Sacramento city, for nine or ten months annually, tow
up barges to lighten them over the numerous shoals and bars formed.

The distance from San Francisco by the river, to Knight's Landing
is about 175 miles, and to Colusi, 265 miles ; it is not common for
steamers carrying over 60 or 80 tons even, to ascend above this point,
except by transferring to barges and towing.

"With the small amount of information acquired from the hasty
and partial reconnoisances made, it cannot be supposed that any
bill that may be gotten up and passed through Congress, for
the construction of a Railroad to the Pacific from the waters of
the Mississippi, either by the Central or any other route, will
definitely mark out the location ot road over that route. The only evidence
of practicability the Members now have before them upon which
to act, is the meagre surveys in connection with the several routes
heretofore made by order of Government. These explorations
serve only to point out the general routes, leaving the question of defi-
nite location open, until a more thorough examination of the section of
country contiguous to the route explored can be made, in order to ascer-
tain the most direct and practicable route to cross the mountains, in ap-
proaching the Pacific.

In my preceeding report I expressed a conviction, based upon instru-
mental surveys, made by myself of the entire extent of country from
Marysville to the Lower Crossing on Truckce river, east of the Sierra,
that the Henness Pass route is not only practicable for a railroad, but
is decidedly the most direct one there is to enter the State from the
valley of the Humboldt.

1 also indicated the definite line for the location of a railroad to ap-
proch the summit, an 1 stated fa -ther my conviction, that it could be
reached with a maximum grade of 85 feet per mile.

The distance from Marysville to the summit would be about 100 miles;
thence to the Lower Crossing on Truckee. at the edge of the Desert,,
about 8" miles ; making a total distance of 180 miles, which is 30 miles
more than by my surveys made in 1855. for a wagon road between the
same points.

There is no other passage in the Sierra south of the Henness Pass
and north of the head waters of the san Joaquin river, but what is
more elevated and much more difficult to reach from the valley of the
Sacramento than it is.

Doubtless in proceeding north from the head waters of the Yuba,
the mountain range becomes less elevated, but at the same time it be-
comes more expanded, and presents at the summit a greater extent of
snow line ; and in addition to the routes being more circuitous as you
advance, the approaches to the summit I apprehend would not be found
as easy as by the Henness route. However, should a more suitable
route be found by either of the passes at the head waters of Feather
river, and eventually be adopted as the line of a trans-continental rail-
way, Marysville, would unquestionably be a point on that line, at which
a connection would be made with your road.

With an extract from my former report, that may better enable a
comparison between the Henness Pass route and the west end of the
route surveyed by Lieut. Beckwith, and I have done.

''The point where Lieut. Beckwith leaves the Humboldt, is 1,364
miles from Council Bluffs, on the Missouri river ; thence to Mud Lake,
(north of Pyramid Lake) 119 miles ; thence to the Madaline Pass,
22.89 miles— altitude 5,607 feet ; thence to the summit of the Sierra
Nevada 44 miles — altitude 5,736 feet; lowest point of table land inter-
mediate, 5,239 feet; thence to Fort Heading 183 miles; thence to Benicia
180 mile — making the distance from Mud Lake to Benicia 430 miles,
or about 165 miles more than from the Lower Crossing on Truckee to
Yallejo, by the Henness Pass, and the San Francisco and Marysville.
Railroad."

"For several miles, descending from the summit of the Sierra, he
has grades of 125 feet per mile, and in computing the cost, one hun-
dred and thirty five and a half miles on the Sacramento river is esti-
mated at $15",U00 per mile, and seventeen miles at $100,000 per mile."

All of which is respectfully submitted.

D. B. SCOTT, Chief Engineer,

Mabysvtlle, May 1860. S. F. & M. R. R.

/ //''-' 5

EVIDENCE

CONCERNING

PROJECTED RAILWAYS

ACROSS THE

SIEEEA EEVADA MOUITAIIS,

EROM

PACIFIC TIDE WATERS IN CALIFORNIA,

RESOURCES, PROMISES AND ACTION OF COMPANIES
ORGANIZED TO CONSTRUCT THE SAME;

TOGETHER WITH

STATEMENTS CONCERNING- PRESENT AND PROSPECTIVE
RAILROAD ENTERPRISES IN THE
STATE OE NEVADA,

PROCURED BY THE

COMMITTEE ON K^lIL EOADS

OF THE FIRST NEVADA LEGISLATURE.

> ♦ • »

PRINTED BY ORDER OF SENATE.

-CARSON CITY:
JOHN CHURCH, STATE PRINTER.

1865.

EAILROAD RESOLUTIONS

APPOINTING A

COMMITTEE OF THE SENATE.

RESOLUTIONS

On the seventh day of January, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
five, the following resolutions were offered by Senator Sumner, of Storey
County, and adopted by the Senate :

Besolved, That a committee of five be appointed by the President of
the Senate, whose duty it shall be to take into immediate consideration
the prospective railroad interests of the State of Nevada; said commit-
tee especially to ascertain and fully report to this Senate what progress
has been made, and what work is being prosecuted by companies organ-
ized and operating under the " Pacific Eailroad Act," passed by Con-
gress and approved in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
two; what the cost of the work completed by these companies, and
what estimates of cost have been obtained as basis for future work on
the proposed route of a,r\j such companies; what the aid received, so-
licited, or publicly expected by said companies outside of the national
aid afforded through the "Pacific Eailroad Act;" and said committee
shall also report as to whether any other companies or associated capi-
talists than those included in the above description, propose the build-
ing of a railroad to the Nevada State line, from navigable tide water
in California, and shall gather and duly report all such information in
regard to this matter as may, by the committee, be deemed advisable.
And said committee shall report advisingly as to what action should be
taken by the Legislature of Nevada, at its present session, to promote or
inaugurate practical work for establishing railroad communication be-
tween navigable tide water in California and the principal town in Ne-
vada.

Resolved, That this committee have power to send for persons and
papers, and administer the oath to parties who may come before the
committee to testify; provided, no expense shall be incurred under these
resolutions without special authority therefor having been first obtained
from the Senate, on a motion before the Senate calling for such authority,
and specifying the reasons for such call. *

In accordance with the above resolutions the following named Sena-
tors were appointed a committee :

Sumner of Storey, Slingerland of "Washoe, Haynes of Douglas, James
of Lyon and Churchill, Larrowe of Lander.

STATEMENT

OF THE

CENTKAL PACIFIC KAILEOAD COMPANI

OF CL^LIB^ORNT^-.

OFFICERS

CENTEAL PACIFIC EAILEOAD COMPANY OF CALIFOENIA.

President,
LELAND STANFOBD.

"Vice President,
C. P. HUNTINGTON.

Treasurer,
MABK HOPKINS.

Secretary,
E. H. MILLEE, Jr.

General Superintendent,
CHAELES CEOCKEE.

Acting Chief Engineer,
S. S. MONTAGUE.

Attorney,
E. B. CEOCKEE.

Directors,
Leland Stanford, Sacramento.

C. P. Huntington, Sacramento.
Mark Hopkins, Sacramento.
E. B. Crocker, Sacramento.
E. H. Miller, Jr., Sacramento.
A. P. Stanford, San Eranclseo.
Charles Marsh, Nevada.

STATEMENT.

Office of the Central Pacific Eailroad Company of California, )

Sacramento, January 12, 1865. j

To the Hon. Messrs. Sumner, Slingerland, Haines, James and Larrowe, Com-
mittee, etc.:

Gentlemen : We notiee in the newspapers* that you have heen ap-
pointed by the Senate of Nevada, a committee to report upon the rail-
road interests of the State of Nevada, and especially upon the Pacific
Eailroad, in the progress of which the citizens of your State are deeply
interested. It would afford the Directors of this company great pleasure
to confer with you personally upon the important matters thus referred
to your committee ; but the pressing duties, growing out of the largely
increased force of laborers now employed in grading the railroad of the
company, prevent. We, therefore, address this communication to you,
and through you to the Legislature and people of Nevada :

SURVEY AND LOCATION OF THE ROUTE.

This company commenced the survey and examination of routes for a
railroad over the Sierra Nevadas in the summer of one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-one, under the superintendence of the late T. D.
Judah, Esq , as Chief Engineer, one of the most eminent and experi-
enced railroad engineers of the time, who made the first complete instru-
mental and " thorough railroad survey " ever made over those moun-
tains. This was done at great expense, and at a time when the feas-
ibility of constructing a railroad over them was deemed exceedingly
doubtful. The result of that survey fully established the practicability
of the route surveyed, though, as was anticipated, requiring a large
outlay of money to construct tbe road. Careful examinations and recon-
noissances were made by Mr. Judah and other officers of the company,
of other routes, but they all resulted in demonstrating the superiority
of the line surveyed, and which was finally adopted by the company,
upon the recommendation of Mr. Judnh. For a full description of the
line thus adopted, its advantages over others, and the various surveys

♦Immediately subsequent to the appointment of the Senate committee, a like committee was appointed in
the Assembly, and the Senate committee was requested by the Assembly to act conjointly with their appoint-
ments. Waiting the last appointments there was delay in forwarding calls for information, which, however,
were dispatched before the above letter was received.

and reconnoissances made by this company, we refer you to the report
made by Mr. Judah, October first, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
one, October twenty-second, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two
(bound in one pamphlet), and July, one thousand eight hundred, and
sixty-three; also, the report of our present Acting Chief Engineer, S. S.
Montague, Esq., made October sixth, one thousand feight hundred and
sixty-four, copies of which accompany this communication.

In the first report Mr. Judah states that these surveys and examina-
tions resulted in " developing a line with lighter grades, less distance,
and encountering fewer obstacles than found upon any other route or
line hitherto examined across the Sierra Nevada mountains, and proving
by actual survey that the difficulties and formidable features of this
range can be successfully overcome for railroad purposes." On pages
ten and eleven, he sums up the prominent features and advantages of the
line.

In connection with this subject of the location of the line of the Pacific
Railroad, we will state that no final selection was made by the company
until after the passage of the Pacific Eailroad Act by Congress, which
was approved July first, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two,
and after Mr. Judah's return from Washington. By the ninth section
of that Act this company was required to file its acceptance of its provi-
sions within six months after its passage, and by the tenth section to
complete fifty miles of its railroad within two years thereafter. When
it is remembered that all the iron, rolling stock, and other railroad ma-
terial had to be ordered and manufactured in a distant market, requiring
months of time, and then transported thousands of miles, running the
gauntlet of the rebel pirates, taking an average of eight months addi-
tional in the passage, and that the first fifty miles carried the road far
into the mountains, and included some of the heaviest and most expen-
sive grading on the whole line, it will be seen that the company were
compelled to commence work as soon as possible, having no time to spare
in making new surveys. But in order to give this question of routes as
full consideration, and obtain all the light possible, a notice was published
in the Sacramento Union for about eight weeks, of which the following is
a copy.

"pacific railroad notice.

"The Central Pacific Eailroad Company of California, desirous of ob-
taining full information with regard to routes across and passing through
the Sierra Nevada mountains, will receive information and give due con-
sideration to the merits of routes other than that surveyed by them:
provided, that proper surveys or reconnoissances are made of such routes
in the usual manner by competent engineers, and furnished to them be-
fore the first day of October, 1862.

LELAND STANFORD,

President.

Mark Hopkins, Secretary.
Dated Sacramento, August 22, 1862.

Letters were also written to parties interested in several routes, and
especially that by way of Placerville. Persons interested in that line,
promised to furnish the company with full information respecting it, but
never did so. From our own knowledge of the roads and the mountains
between Placerville and Carson City, we were confident that a railroad

could not be constructed on that line, within the time required by the
Act of Congress, or at any reasonable outlay of money, and we presumed
that the citizens of Placerville had become satisfied of these facts, from
the examinations made by them, and therefore deemed it unnecessary to
report the result to this company. We were further confirmed in this,
by the appearance afterward of a report of an alleged survey over John-
son's Pass, which showed that it would be necessary to construct a tun-
nel through the granite rock at the summit three miles and three quar-
ters in length, a work which would require at least fifteen years of time
and an expenditure often millions of dollars to complete.

Further information upon this question of routes, has only served to
convince us of the wisdom and correctness of the selection made. Our
only object has been to select the cheapest, most direct and most practi-
cable line for this great national highway, and if that by way of Placer-
ville had possessed even equal advantages with the one by way of Dutch
Plat and Donner Lake, it would have received the pi'eference, because it
was at that time the route principally traveled, and its selection wrould
have secured the support, instead of hostility, of the enterprising citizens
of El Dorado county, already fully alive to the importance of railroads,
and with whom we had had intimate business relations. But cost and
facility of construction were necessarily overruling considerations in
determining so important a matter.

We regret that the selection made injuriously affected the interests
of some other railroads, wagon roads and stage lines, already established
and in successful operation. The opening of a new and better route
necessarily affected them. The result has beeu a bitter and vindictive
opposition from these interested parties, and which we fear is now being
brought to bear upon the Legislature and people of Nevada, to delay the
progress of a work which has already interfered with their profits, in
the reduction of fares and freights over the mountains. Still what they
have thus failed to realize has been a great gain to Nevada. But this
result could not have been avoided by us even if we had desired to. It
is necessarily incident to the construction of the Pacific Railroad.

PACIFIC RAILROAD ACT.

In the fall of one thousand height hundred and sixty-one, Mr. Judah
prepared accurate maps and profiles of his surveys, and the Company
sent him with other agents to Washington, to lay the same before Con-
gress, to induce that body to extend national aid to the work, for with-
out such aid it is well known the road could not be constructed, on
account of its great cost and the uncertainty of its being a profitable
investment. Without aid of this kind, capitalists could not be induced
to invest their money in it. Congress finally passed the Pacific Railroad
Act, granting important assistance to this as well as other companies,
and securing the construction of a magnificent national railroad from
the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean, which will traverse the heart of
your State Irom its eastern to its western boundaries, and which is des-
tined to speedily develop its wonderful mineral resources. This result
I was secured by the untiring efforts of the Chief Engineer and Agent of
I this Company, as will appear by the following letter addressed to him
\ by prominent Congressmen :

"Washington, June 24, 1862
"T. D. Judah, Esq., of California:

" Dear Sir : Learning of your anticipated speedy departure for Cali-
fornia on Pacific Eailroad business, we cannot let this opportunity pass
■without tendering to you our warmest thanks for your valuable assis-
tance in aiding the passage of the Pacific Railroad bill through Congress.
Your explorations and surveys in the Sierra Nevada mountains, have
settled the. question of the practicability of the line, and enabled many\
members to vote confidently on the great measure, while your indefati-
gable exertions and intelligent explanations of the practical features of
of the enterprise have gone very far to aid in its inauguration.

Yery truly yours,

JAMBS H. CAMPBELL,
Chairman Select Committee of Pacific R. R.

A. A. SARGENT,

Of Sub-Committee of House.

R. Franchot,
Schuyler Colfax,
William D. Kelley,
T. G. Phelps,
Frank P. Blair,
S. Edgerton,
J. H. Goodwin,

A. W. Clark,
Burt. Van Horn,
W. A. Wheeler,

B. B. Yan Yalkenburgh,
Alfred Ely,

John F. Potter,
William Windor,

A. C. Pomeroy,
J. H. Lane,

A. Kennedy,
Daniel Clark,
H. B. Anthony,

B. F. Wade,

REPRESENTATIVES.

F. F. Low,
Elihu B. Washburn,
Samuel F. Worcester,
William T. Cutler,
Augustus Frank,
H. G. Blake,
John A. Bingham,
W. H. Wallace,
R. E. Fenton,
I. N. Arnold,
E. Augustus Smith,
John B. Steele,
Thaddeus Stevens,
Edward Haight,

SENATORS.

James A. MeDougall,
Milton S. Latham,
J. W. Nesmith,
Edgar Cowan,
O. H. Browning,
J. B. Henderson,

Edwin H. Webster,
J. S. Watts,
John B. Alley,
William Watt,
W. F. Kellogg,*
Erastus Corning,
C. Yibbard,
Thomas S. Price,
Cyrus Aldrich,
George W. Julian,
F. C. Beaman,
Thomas M. Pomeroy,
Alexander H. Rice,
C. B. Sedgwick.

H. Wilson,
L. M. Morrill,
A. Wright,
Lyman Trumbull,
John C. Ten Eyck.

John W. Forney, Secretary United States Senate."

NATIONAL AID.

By the Pacific Railroad Act of one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
two, as amended in one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, this
Company is entitled to United States Government six per cent, thirty
year bonds to the amount of sixteen thousand dollars per mile for that
portion of its line between Sacramento and Arcade Creek, seven miles, j
that being the point fixed by the President of the United States, under
the Act, as the western base of the Sierra Nevadas, and forty-eight thou-
sand dollars per mile for the one hundred and fifty miles lying east of

that point. They also are to receive twenty sections, equal to twelve
thousand eight hundred acres, per mile of railroad, of public land; that
is to say, every section designated by odd numbers within twenty miles
on each side of the railroad line, excepting the mineral lands, on which,
however, the timber is granted to the Company. These Government
bonds are, however, a lien upon the railroad and its fixtures, but the
Company are authorized to issue mortgage bonds to an equal amount,
which are to have priority over them.
*

STATE AID.

The Legislature of the State of California, at its session in one thou-
sand eight hundred and sixty-four, authorized the Company to issue one
million five hundred thousand dollars of its bonds, the interest of which,
-at seven per cent, per annum for twenty years, was provided to be paid
by the State in gold coin, from a railroad fund raised by a special tax, in
consideration of certain services to be rendered by the Company. These
bonds were recently issued by the Company, and the constitutionality
and binding force of the law has been fully established by a recent de-
cision of the Supreme Court of this State. "We send you herewith a
pamphlet containing a copy of this law, with the opinions of eminent
counsel, showing its validity and irrepealibility, and the decision of the
Supreme Court thereon. These bonds are now available to the Com-
pany, and will enable us to employ all the laborers that can be worked
to advantage in the grading of the road during this season.

COUNTY SUBSCRIPTIONS.

The Legislature of one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three also
passed laws authorizing the counties of Sacramento, Placer, and the city
and county of San Francisco to issue their bonds in payment of the
stock of the Company, the first to the amount of three hundred thou-
sand dollars, the second two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the
last six hundred thousand dollars, depending, however, upon a favorable
vote of the citizens of those counties. This was secured in each county
by large majorities, and the subscriptions were promptly made and the
bonds issued by* the first two counties. These subscriptions have not
only greatly aided the Company, but have assisted it by showing the
public confidence in the work and its conductors. The enemies of the
Pacific Kailroad, by their efforts and lawsuits, succeeded in delaying the
subscription by San Francisco, and the Legislature of one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-four authorized the Supervisors to compromise with
the Company, which they did, by directing the issue of four hundred
I thousand dollars of the bonds, without taking any stock. The same
' interested parties have thus far succeeded in inducing a majority of the
j Supervisors to refuse to carry into effect their own brdinance. The same
| persons instituted suits against the Company in each of these county
J subscriptions to prevent the issue of their bonds ; but they signally failed
i in all of them. Nine thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine shares of
j stock, equal to nine hundred and eighty-eight thousand nine hundred
j dollars, have been subscribed by individuals and disposed of for railroad
i material, etc., and the Company has the largest list of stockholders of
' any other railroad corporation in this State, among whom are some of
| the largest capitalists in California and the Atlantic States. Such is a
I brief statement of some of the means thus far secured by the Directors
i to carry on the work.

PROSECUTION OP THE WORK.

Soon after Mr. Judah's return to California from "Washington, the
Company placed several corps of engineers in the field to make the final
working surveys of the first division of fifty miles, which terminates
near Illinoistown. The work of grading was commenced in February,
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three. The first shipment of iron
rails reached Sacramento October eighth, one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-three, and the track laying immediately commenced, and was
steadily prosecuted, with a few delays caused by the failure to receive
supplies of iron and ties within the time contracted for, until June six,
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, when the first thirty-one
miles were completed to Newcastle, attaining an elevation of about one
thousand feet above Sacramento. A large portion of this thirty-one *
miles is in the lower foothills, requiring expensive grading through rocky
points. We are confident that the amount of work done and material
purchased by this Company since it commenced operations, will favor-
ably compare with that of any other Company on this coast, or even the
Atlantic States, in the same length of time.

The Union Pacific Eailroad Company, created by the Pacific Eailroad
Act, and composed of some of the wealthiest capitalists in the Eastern
States, has a line the eastern end of which is easy of construction com-
pared with the California line. Commencing at Omaha on the Missouri
river, they have comparatively little grading to do until they reach the
Eocky Mountains. Their iron and rolling stock can be purchased close
at hand, and yet, with these and other advantages, they have not as yet
laid a single rail, and the latest accounts state that they do not expect to
finish grading the first eighteen miles before May next. Eecent accounts
state that thirty-eight miles, from Wyandotte to Lawrence, over an
almost level plain, upon a side branch of the main Pacific Eailroad, made
by another compan}^, has only just been completed. We are confident
that the cost of grading the first' fifty miles of the California road will
equal the expense of grading three hundred miles of the line between
the Missouri river and the Eocky Mountains. These facts alone show that
this Company has not been lacking in diligence and energy, in raising
the means, procuring the material and constructing the work so far.
Indeed, we believe that this Company has done more work in grading
and preparing road bed, than all the other railroads in California put
together, not even excluding that which pretends to be a rival road.

Not only has thirty-one miles of first class railroad and telegraph been
completed, with several substantial bridges, numerous culverts, all of
brick or stone, but one hundred and fifty-nine thousand eight hundred
and twenty six dollars has been expended on the grading and masonry
between Newcastle and Clipper Gap. So, also, a large amount of iron,
rolling stock, ties, and other railroad material has been purchased and
paid for, most of which has arrived and is now in use, or ready for
use. We send you herewith a verified statement of the Secretary and
Treasurer, showing the amount already expended by the Company on its
work, the amount of iron, cars, locomotives, ties and railroad material
purchased and on hand, showing also the condition of the affairs of the
Company, and the means it has for the prosecution of the work.

CAUSES OF DELAY.

It is true that the work of construction has not progressed as rapidly
as the Company have desired, and as the public impatience has de-
manded. But when the difficulties to be encountered are fully consid-
ered, we feel confident that the public will not blame the Company
because their expectations have not been fully realized. One thing is
certain, that no one can be more anxious than the Directors to see the
road completed as soon as possible, and none will consent to greater sac-
rifices than they to accomplish it. We have a large pecuniary interest
in that result. But it must be borne in mind that the Company is con-
structing the greatest work of the age, in the midst of the greatest
rebellion known in history, which shakes the country from its center to
its circumference, and which is deranging the finances of the country to
an extent heretofore unknown. The building of railroads is mainly a
question of money. While the war has swelled the paper currency of
the country, and thus made that kind of money plenty in the Eastern
States, gold has been almost driven from use there, and rapidly with-
drawn from circulation here to be sold there. It rates at so high a pre-
mium, that it can be obtained in the Eastern markets, where alone capi-
tal can be found for railroad purposes to any extent, only at a ruinous
sacrifice. If the National currency was in use here, this difficulty would
be in a great measure removed. But the Pacific States, whether wisely
or unwisely it is not necessary for us to say, has practically excluded that
currency from circulation. This Company is, therefore, compelled to
use gold in payment for labor, and in all its business transactions at
home. This can only be procured in large amounts at a great and
ruinous sacrifice of its securities. Looking to the future, as well as to
the present interests of the great work confided to our care, we have
not deemed it prudent to submit to sacrifices, which, while affording but
little present aid, would cripple, if not stop the prosecution of the work
in the future. We have hoped that this high premium on gold which
has ruled during the past year was but temporary, and that it would
soon be obtained at rates which would enable us to dispose of our secur-
ities without too great a sacrifice. In pursuing this course we feel confi-
dent of the approbation of every true friend of the Pacific Bailroad,
even though it results in a temporary delay of the work we all so ar-
dently desire to see completed.

It was under these circumstances that the use of the bonds of San
Francisco, became of such vital importance to the Company during the
past summer. These bonds can be more readily sold for gold in the San
Francisco market than any ;other, except, perhaps, State bonds. Had
we received them promptly when we were legally entitled to them, they
would have afforded the means of prosecuting the work, and avoiding
some of the delay which has occurred. The majority of the Supervisors
of that great city, which will receive more benefit from the railroad than
any other portion of the country, in defiance of a popular vote of more
than two to one in favor of the Company, and in violation of their own
plighted faith and honor given by a vote of nine to two, in favor of the
compromise proposed by themselves and accepted by this Company,
have still persisted in refusing to do what the law enjoins, and the Su-
preme Court has repeatedly awarded. Their course will be a lasting
reproach to that great metropolis, which has been entirely willing to
enjoy the benefits of the work, without sharing any of its risk or ex-
11a

pense. But this difficulty we believe will soon be overcome, and four
hundred thousand dollars of bonds, of the most available kind, will soon
be placed at the disposal of the Company to be used in pushing on the
railroad toward your State. The same interested parties have been un-
tiring in their efforts, sparing no expense of time or money, to deprive
us of these means. So far as this has contributed to delay the work,
they must bear the responsibility. The application for a mandamus to
compel the Supervisors to deliver these bonds has been argued and sub-
mitted to the Supreme Court, and we reasonably hope for a speedy
decision.

s AVAILABLE MEANS.

We have referred to only a few of the many difficulties the Company
has had to encounter. It would make this communication too volumi-
nous to mention them all. But it affords us pleasure to state, that we
are able to give assurance of such a prosecution of the work in the
future, as will leave no room for complaint. It must be borne in mind
that up to this time the Company has used only its own means in carrying
on the work, having thus far received no direct benefit from the prom-
ised national or State aid. Although our enemies have industriously
circulated reports of the total cessation of all work on the line, yet they
have been utterly without foundation, as there has been at no time less
than one hundred and fifty men, with a due proportion of horses and
carts, at work on the road. Now, however, that aid has become useful.
The recent decision of the Supreme Court on the State Aid Bill has ren-
dered one million five hundred thousand dollars of bonds, of a market
value nearly equal to State bonds, available for the work of construction.

It cannot be many weeks before a final decision will be rendered by
the Supreme Court, in the suit for the San Francis6o bonds, for four
hundred thousand dollars. The principal questions involved in that
suit have already been decided in favor of the Company by the same
Court. These bonds will undoubtedly be received long before the one
million five hundred thousand dollars of State aid bonds are exhausted.

There is also now due from the United States one million two hundred
and sixty-four thousand dollars of Government bonds, under the Pacific
Bailroad Acts, upon the thirty-one miles of completed road. These
bonds will be issued as soon as they can be printed and executed b}^ the
proper officers. Some delay has occurred on account of the great press
of business in that department; but there is no doubt that they will be
received within a few months, if not weeks. As soon as these bonds are
received, the Company are authorized to issue an equal amount of first
mortgage bonds, which will have priority to those of the Government,
and will therefore have a high market value. This will add one million
two hundred and sixty-four thousand dollars to our available assets.

The Company is entitled to a patent for a large amount of public land
for the thirty-one miles constructed. The exact number of acres, or the
value of these lands, it is not possible to state at this time, but many
estimate it at five hundred thousand dollars. In a few months they will
become a source of revenue to the Company. The receipts of the rail-
road now in operation, and which will greatly increase as it is extended
up the mountains, will also form no inconsiderable item of assets. The
Company also has eighteen million four hundred and sixty-one thousand
one hundred dollars of unsold capital stock, which can soon be made
available for the construction of the work. As the road is extended, it

will soon entirely control the immense trade to Nevada, and thus the value
of the stock, as a dividend paying investment, will soon be established,
and it will undoubtedly be sought after by capitalists. .No further ex-
pense will be incurred in the purchase of iron, chairs, spikes, or ties,
during this season, as a sufficient amount is now on hand to lay all the
track that can be graded within that time. Thus all the means of the
Company can be applied solely to the grading, and preparing the road
for the track-layers.

FUTURE PROSPECTS.

From this plain statement it will be seen that this Company is now in
a position to prosecute the work vigorously from this time onward until
it is fully completed, for as the road is extended every twenty miles the
national ?aid becomes available, both in bonds and land. The policy of
the Directors has been, and probably will continue to be, not to proceed
rashly, or to incur obligations that cannot be promptly met. A contrary
course would soon lead to financial embarrassment, and endanger the
completion of the work. Feeling confident in the future, handbills have
been issued calling for a large force of laborers, a copy of which is sent
with this. With this increased number of workmen, the work will be
pushed forward vigorously during the season.

We feel confident that the road will be completed twelve miles fur-
ther, to Clipper Gap, by May next, and to Illinoistown, fifty-four miles
■ from Sacramento, by September next. We expect to reach Dutch Flat,
which is sixty-eight miles, in time for the spring business of one thou-
sand! eight hundred and sixty-six, and the Yuba bottoms, near Cyrstal
Lake, by the fall of one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six. We
have no doubt of being able to complete the road to the State line within
the time fixed by the Act of Congress. How much sooner than that,
depends upon the price of gold and the condition of financial affairs in
the Atlantic States, matters which cannot be foretold. Of one thing
the people of Nevada may rest assured : that this Company will do all
that can be done, by the judicious use of the means at their disposal, to
complete the railroad to and through Nevada at the earliest possible
moment. For this the interest of the Company is a sure guarantee.

We ask no financial aid from Nevada at this time; but our good faith
and zeal in carrying forward the great work so important to her people,
entitles us at least to words of encouragement from her Legislature.
We trust her representatives will see that this Company, in the selection
of the most dii'ect and available route over the mountains, and in the
industry with which national, State, county, and individual aid and cap-
ital has been concentrated upon the work, and the progress and prepar-
ation of material already made, affords the only reliable hope for the
speedy construction of any raiiroad over the mountains. It is idle to
talk of constructing two railroads over the mountains at the present
time. It cannot be done ; and all agitation of the matter tends to
hinder the woi"k on the only road that has or can secure national aid.
It is certain that Congress will never assist in building a road to rival or
compete with one in which so large an amount of national funds will be
invested. Any act, therefore, which tends to create doubt or distrust in
the public mind, will only delay the completion of the road so much de-
sired by the people of Nevada and California.

i a

WORK DONE.

We add the following statement of the t work done and railroad
material purchased by the Company up to January one, one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-five :

AMOUNT OF WORK DONE.

Earth and cement excavation, cubic yards ,

Excavation requiring blasting, cubic yards ,

Stone masonry, cubic yards

Cobble and granite around bridge piers, cubic yards.

Number of brick in the work

Timber in structures, feet B. M

Lumber in structures, feet JB M

Number of redwood ties

Tons of iron

Locomotives ,

Cars -

692,598

195,576

3,230

825

280,582

,233,800

130,000

116,000

8,000

146

ESTIMATES OF COST.

The estimated cost of grading, masonry, bridging, trestling, depot
buildings and water stations, from Newcastle to Clipper Cap, a distance
of twelve miles, is five hundred and seventy-four thousand eight hun-
dred and fifty-two dollars. The estimated cost of the same work from
Clipper Cap to the end of the first division of fifty miles, near Illinois-
town, is five hundred and eighty-four thousand four hundred and fifty-one
dollars. The estimated cost of the same work from the end of the fifty
miles to Dutch Flat, a distance of eighteen miles, is two million one hun-
dred and sixty-nine thousand two hundred and seventy-seven dollars.
The estimated cost of the railroad from Dutch Plat to the State line is
•six million sixty-five thousand dollars, and from the State line to the Big
Bend of the Truckee, two million five hundred thousand dollars, as is
shown by the report of Mr. Judah.

This Company has surveyed the line to a point five miles east of the
Big Bend of the Truckee river, from which point to Salt Lake it will
probably be located on the cheapest and most direct route, passing
through, or as near as practicable, the intermediate mining districts, the
trade of which will constitute an important part of the business of the
road. Where it is impracticable to carry the main line through the
important mining towns, branch roads will be constructed.

The Pacific Eailroad is a subject of peculiar solicitude on the part of
the American people, especially those residing in Nevada, and we have
endeavored in this communication to give them a full statement of the
present condition and future prospects of that portion of the work com-
mitted to the care of this Company, and in which Nevada is more
directly interested. We feel assured that your citizens will extend to
this great national enterprise their cordial support, and that neither
they or their representatives will extend the least aid to those who, from
interested motives, are exerting their utmost to delay it.

L. STANPOED,
President C. P. E. E. Co.

E H. Miller, Jr.,

Secretary C. P. E. E. Co.

Office of Central Pacific Eailroad Company of California, ")

Sacramento, January 13, 1865. )
To Leland Stanford,

President Central Pacific Railroad Company :

Sir — In compliance with your request, we submit the following veri-
fied statement of the affairs of the Company at this date :

The authorized capital stock of the Company is twenty million
dollars.

The total amount of the capital stock issued and subscribed is one
million five hundred and thirty-eight thousand nine hundred dollars.

The total amount expended by the Company is two million seven
hundred and nine thousand and twenty-five and seventy hundredths
dollars.

The total liabilities of the Company are :

LIABILITIES.

For first mortgage bonds issued, payable July 1, 1883

For bonds of July 1, 1864, payable July 1, 1884

For bills payable (not matured)

For unpaid bills of 1864

For balance due the treasurer for advances

Total

1,394,000 00

27,000 00

115,438 35

1,263 86

6,493 86

L,544,295 70

The assets and available means of the Company are

.Capital stock unsold

Amount due from stockholders

Bonds of Placer County unsold

Bonds of Sacramento County unsold

Amount due from the city and county of San Francisco,
in seven per cent, gold bonds

Amount due from the United States, in thirty year six
per cent bonds

Bonds for $1,500,000, bearing interest at seven per cent,
per annum, payable in gold, by the State of California,
(under a law the constitutionality and validity of which
has been sustained by the Supreme Court,) and the
first installment of the interest was paid to the Com-
pany at the State Treasury on the first of January.
Twenty-seven thousand dollars of these bonds have
been negotiated, leaving available...,

Every alternate section of public land (except mineral
land) for twenty miles on each side of the line of the
road

Thirty-one miles of first class railroad and telegraph line
completed, with depot buildings, engine houses, etc....

Eight locomotives '.

$18,461,100 00

135,670 00

75,000 00

163,500 00

4C0,000 00

1,264,000 00

1,473,000 00

Ten passenger ears

Pour baggage cars ,

One hundred and twenty-four freight cars

Five hand cars

Three construction cars

Extra axles and wheels for cars

Extra drivers, tires and axles for engines

One sixty-horse power stationary engine and machine^

• for machine shop

Five thousand tons iron

Chairs and spikes enough to lay all the iron

Forty-two thousand three hundred and five redwood
ties, enough to lay twenty-two miles of track

Grading and masonry, beyond Newcastle, done by the
Company at a cost of.

Sutter Lake property, about thirty acre's within the
limits of Sacramento City, and the exclusive right to
the use of the levee front in Sacramento, from K
street north, about one thousand one hundred feet in
length by one hundred and fifty feet in width

Two lots in Sacramento City

Land at Eoseville, about twenty acres

159,826 32

E. H. MILLEE, Jr.,

Secretary C. P. E. E. Co.

MAEK HOPKINS,

Treasurer C. P. E. E. Co.

Subscribed and sworn to before me, this fourteenth day of January,
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five.

E. B. CEOCKEE,
Court Commissioner for Sacramento County, Cal.

RECENT REPORT

OP THE

ACTING CHIEF ENGINEER

OF THE

CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPAII.

ENGINEER'S REPORT.

Engineer's Office, C. P. E. E. of California, 1
Sacramento, October 8, 1864. j

To the President and Directors of the Central Pacific Railroad Company of
California :

Gentlemen : I present herewith a report upon the progress of the sur"
veys, work of construction, and equipment of your road to the present
date; and also an estimate of the business and revenue of tbe road when
completed to Stout's Crossing of Truckee Eiver, a distance of one hun-
dred and fifty-five miles from Sacramento.

As the report of your Chief Engineer, the late T. D. Judah, Esq., made
in July, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, contained a de-
tailed description of the several lines surveyed up to that time, I have
deemed it unnecessary to embody a similar description in this report.

I append, however, a few notes of the general topographical features
of the country over which the line passes, and also notes of such surveys
as have been made since the date referred to.

The practicability of a railroad route across the Sierras was for many
years a question of serious doubt, even among the warmest advocates of
a Pacific Eailroad ; and previous to the surveys made by Mr. Judah in
1861, under the auspices of your company, but little reliable information
on the subject had been placed before the public.

The result of this survey was the development of a feasible line for a
railroad, with a maximum grade of one hundred and five (105) feet per
mile.

Before commencing the survey, careful and extended examinations
were made of five of the most prominent routes across the mountains,
distances measured, and the altitude of the different "Passes" ascer-
tained by barometrical observations. The conclusions based upon these
examinations were fully confirmed by the subsequent instrumental sur-
vey, made, as before stated, in one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
one.

Before the final adoption of this route for the location of your road,
still further explorations and examinations were made, but without satis-
factory results, save the evidence afforded that the route selected for the
experimental survey was beyond question the best, if not indeed the only
practicable route for a railroad across the mountains ; and it is gratify-
ing to be able to state that as far as the location survey has been ex-
tended, its entire practicability has been fully proven.

The pass selected is believed to be the lowest of any across the Sierras,
which are attainable by a practicable railroad line. In fact, I think that
upon no other route (with perhaps one exception), has a continuous line
of levels been carried from tide water to the Summit, and I am not
aware of the result of that survey having been placed before the public.

The route selected for your road is the most direct in its general
course of any proposed across the mountains, the distance from the city
of Sacramento to the foot of the maximum grade upon the eastern slope
being but one hundred and eighteen miles, which is much less than a
corresponding point can be reached by any other route.

A careful examination of the map of Central California, will convince
any one of the many important advantages of location which your road
possesses. Following one of the main spurs of the Sierras, which forms
the divide between the waters of Bear Eiver and the Yubas on the north,
and the American River on the south, the crossing of the deep canons
formed by those streams is entirely avoided, and you are able to make
the ascent of the western slope of the mountains, attaining an altitude of
seven thousand feet without any loss of grade, beyond the first eighteen
miles.

Another important feature of your route is, that the Second Summit of
the Sierras is avoided. As can be seen by reference to the map, that
portion of the Sierras lying between latitude 38° 30' and 41° north, con-
sists of two parallel ranges of nearly equal altitude, enclosing an im-
mense basin from ten to thirty miles in width. Lake Tahoe, which is
the great reservoir for the waters of the upper or southern end of this
basin, finds its outlet through the Truckee Eiver, to which Mr. Judah, in
bis report of one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, refers as follows :

" Running at first northeasterly about eight miles, thence northerly
about ten, and thence northeasterly about twelve miles, the Truckee
passes down between these two summits, with a nearly uniform fall of
about thirty-five feet per mile; thence sweeping round to the eastward
it passes through the second range, or summit, at a depression where it
seems to be entirely worn away down to the level of the river; thence
pursuing its way through an entensive plain known as the Truckee
Meadows; thence through the Washoe mountains to the Big Bend;
thence northerly about twenty miles, finds its way into Pyramid Lake.

"At the Donner Lake Pass, sometimes called the 'Truckee Pass/
where our line crosses the first summit of the Sierra Nevada, the altitude
of the line is about one thousand two hundred feet above the Truckee
River.

" Donner Lake lies immediately beneath, at a depth of one thousand
one hundred feet. Two long ranges, or spurs, enclose the lake and its
valley, declining in height gradually to the Truckee River, about eight
miles below. Our line is carried down along the side bill of the spur, or
range, immediately above the lake, and upon its south side, to the
Truckee River, which point it reaches in a distance of eleven and a half
miles of line, with a uniformly descending grade of one hundred and five
feet per mile from the summit.

"The Truckee thus reached, all further difficulty of location ceases, as
it pierces its way through all obstructions, with a uniform descent of not
over forty feet per mile, to the Humboldt Desert, which forms the Sink
of the Humboldt and Carson Rivers.

"Thus the Second Summit of the Sierras, and the crossing of the
Washoe mountains, are entirely avoided, and from the western base to the

Summit of the Sierra Nevada, the grade is uniformly ascending or level
(there being rio descending grade going eastward); while from the
Summit to the Big Bend of Truckee, or Humboldt Desert, a continuous
descending grade is maintained."

These important advantages of location will not be underrated by those
who are conversant with the difficulties attending the construction and
working of mountain roads.

By avoiding the Second Summit of the Sierras and Washoe mountains,
you are not only enabled to save the grades required to overcome those
ranges, but also encounter a much narrower snow-belt — the eastern
limit of deep snow upon this line being the Truckee Biver, at a distance
of but twelve miles from the Summit. %

GRADIENTS.

The objection which has been so often urged against the successful
operation of a railroad across the Sierras, viz : the heavy gradients to
be overcome, has been so fully answered in the previous reports of your
Chief Engineer, that it is unnecessary to discuss the matter at length
here.

"With the practical examples furnished by the Baltimore and Ohio, the
Virginia Central, and other important roads in the Eastern States and
Europe, which might be cited, the question of the successful working of
a raih'oad with gradients of one hundred and five feet per mile, is neither
doubtful or problematical. Upon that portion of your road which is al-
ready completed, there occur four and one half consecutive miles of
maximum grade of one hundred and five feet per mile, over which for
more than four months six trains have passed daily without accident or
detention — the passenger trains making a speed fully equal to the average
speed of express trains on Eastern roads. The operating of a road of this
character is of course more expensive than where lighter gradients can
be obtained.

Besides requiring a superior class of machinery, an additional item of
expense will be found in the increased consumption of fuel; yet the
abundant supply of this article in the immediate vicinity of your road,
and the low price at which the same can be delivered, viz : from two dol-
lars and fifty cents to three dollars per cord, renders this a less important
item than would otherwise appear.

The maximum grade, which, according to the Act of Congress
passed July first, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, you
are allowed to use in the construction of your road, is one hun-
dred and sixteen (116) feet per mile; the adopted maximum is, how-
ever, one hundred and five (105) feet, and at no point will it be neces-
sary to exceed this grade. The location of the only portion of the
line upon which the preliminary surveys indicated the necessity of using
a higher grade than one hundred and five feet, has already been accom-
plished with a grade of less than eighty feet per mile, and as the levels
nave been carefully tested from tide water to the Summit, the practica-
bility of constructing your road upon the adopted maximum, is fully de-
monstrated.

A table of grades from Sacramento to the end of the located line, is
appended, by which it will be seen that the location thus far has been
made with a less distance of maximum grade than was contemplated by
the original survey.

ALIGNMENT.

Although by the Act of Congress already referred to, you are allowed
to use the maximum curves used on the Baltimore and Ohio Eailroad,
the adopted maximum is ten degrees, or a radius of five hundred and
seventy-three feet. But two curves of this radius (with the exception of
the curves used on temporary tracks in the city of Sacramento), occur
on the first division, and at those points the grade is comparatively light.
It has been necessary in but few instances to introduce maximum curves
upon maximum grades, and the alignment will be found to be more
favorable than was originally anticipated.

By reference to the appended tabular statement of the alignment, it
will be seen that more than sixty per cent of the first division is tangent
or straight line, while of the eight succeeding miles, in the very "heart
of the mountains," more than twenty per cent, is tangent line.

This will, I think, bear a favorable comparison with the alignment of
other roads constructed through mountainous regions.

FIRST DIVISION OP FIFTY MILES.

For a general description of the located line of this division I would
respectfully refer you to the report of your Chief Engineer, made July,
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three.

No changes were made in the line between Sacramento and Newcas-
tle, but from the thirty-first to the forty-eighth section, almost an entire
relocation has been made, resulting in a material reduction in the cost of
the work, and several important improvements in the alignment of sec-
tions thirty-five and and forty-three; the changes being made (with the
exception of a single instance), without any increase of grade.

The most important changes were upon the line through Dutch Eavine
(sections thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four and thirty-five), from Lime
Point to the head of Bock Creek (sections thirty-eight to forty, inclu-
sive), through Clipper Eavine to Wild Cat (sections forty-four and forty-
five), and at Baney's Eanch, by which the contemplated tunnel at that
point is avoided, reducing the cost of a single section (forty-seven), more
than $70,000.

By the present location no tunneling will be required on the first divi-
sion.

WORK OF CONSTRUCTION.

As no portion of your road was fully completed at the date of the last
report of your Chief Engineer, it may not be inappropriate to refer here
to the progress and manner of construction of the first division.

That portion of your road lying between the foot of K street, in the
city of Sacramento, and the California Central Eailroad, comprising sec-
tions one to eighteen, inclusive, was placed under contract to Charles
Crocker & Co., December twenty-seventh, one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-two, but active operations were not commenced until the
month of February following, from which time the work steadily and
rapidly progressed, and on the twenty-ninth day of February, one thou-
sand eight hundred and sixty-four, their contract was fully completed,
and the road ready for business from Sacramento to the junction with
the California Central Eailroad.

The second subdivision of the first division, comprising sections nine-
teen to thirty-one, inclusive, was let in July, one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-three, as follows :

Sections nineteen and twenty, to Cyrus Collins & Bro.; sections twen-
ty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three and twenty-four, to Messrs. Turton,
Knox & Byan; sections twenty-five, twenty-six and twenty-seven, to
Charles D. Bates & Co.; sections twenty-eight and twenty-nine, to S. D.
Smith, and sections thirty and thirty-one, to Charles Crocker. The
work on this portion of the line was fully completed, the track laid and
the road open to Newcastle on the sixth day of June last.

The road has been constructed in the most permanent and durable
manner, and the general character of the work will compare favorably
with first class railroad work in the Eastern States.

The bridge acress the American Biver is the largest and most substan-
tial structure of the kind in the State, comprising two spans of Howe's
truss,, of one hundred and ninety-two feet each, in the clear, with ap-
proaches of trestling, resting on pile foundations, of two thousand four
hundred feet in length on the south, and six hundred feet on the north
side of the river, making a total length of bridging of three thousand
four hundred feet.

The foundations of the piers are of piles, which are tenoned and capped
with timbers twelve inches square, upon which are laid longitudinal tim-
bers of the same dimensions as the caps, one foot apart and secured by
bolts.

On these timbers a solid flooring of ten by twelve inches is laid, pro-
jecting one foot bej'ond the footing course of the intended masonry.

One hundred and twenty-three piles, from twenty-five to thirty-five
feet in length, were used in the foundation of each pier.

As a security against the action of floods, several hundred yards of
cobbles were placed around the foundations of each pier, filling the space
between and around the piles, inside the coffer dam, up to low water
mark. In addition to this, about sixty car loads of granite have recently
been placed around the piers in such a manner as is believed will render
them perfectly secure from all action of high water.

The trestling at Arcade Creek is two hundred feet in length, and simi-
lar in plan to that at the American Biver.

THE BRIDGE AT DRY CREEK

Consists of four spans of Burr's truss, of fifty-four and one-half feet each,
resting on stone piers, and connected with the embankment at each end
by shore bents of trestling.

THE ANTELOPE CREEK BRIDGE

Consists of one span of Burr's truss, resting upon substantial granite
piers.

The above are all the wooden structures that occur upon the first
thirty-one miles of your road, and for full details respecting them, refer-
ence is made to the above mentioned report of your Chief Engineer for
the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three.

THE CULVERTS

On sections one to eighteen, inclusive, thirty-six in number, are built in
a thorough and substantial manner, of hard burned brick, laid in hy-
draulic cement, with parapet walls, coped with granite six inches in
thickness, securely fastened to the walls with iron anchors.

On sections nineteen to thirty-one, inclusive, the culverts are built ex-
clusively of granite, with paving of the same material.

THE TIES

Furnished by the contractors are of the best quality of coast, or black
redwood, and there are now delivered, in addition to those already used,
a sufficient number to lay twenty-two miles of track.

THE TRACK

Has been laid in a thorough and workmanlike manner, and is ballasted
with such material as could be obtained in the vicinity of the road; The
material composing the road bed on sections nineteen to thirty-one,
forms of itself an excellent ballast, being for the most part a decomposed
granite, which, while forming an excellent support for the superstruc-
ture, is sufficiently porous to prevent the collection of water on the road
bed.

Portions of the track, especially through the cement and clay cuts on
the plains, will probably require a better quality of ballast than has yet
been provided. Excellent material for this purpose can be obtained
near the confluence of Secret and Miners' Eavines, and within one half
mile of the road.

The cost of grading a track to the point named will be but trifling, and
I would recommend its construction at an early day.

Good ballasting is found at various points on the line, and besides the
inexhaustible quantities of decomposed granite already alluded to, ex-
tensive deposits of gravel, and various kinds of disintegrated rock are
met with at convenient intervals, so that an adequate supply of ballast-
ing can always be obtained.

BUILDINGS.

Commodious freight and passenger depots have been erected at Sacra-
mento and Newcastle, at the former place an engine house, with stalls
for five engines, has also been built.

Turn tables have been built at both named places, and a Y track con-
structed at the Junction. Suitable watering places have also been pro-
vided at Sacramento, Junction and Pino.

A Fairbank's track scale, of a capacity of sixty tons, has been landed
from the ship, and will soon be erected at the Junction.

A TELEGRAPH LINE ,

Has also been constructed along the line of your road, from Sacramento
to Newcastle, and offices established at both named places.

It may not be improper to state in this connection, that the Commis-
sioners appointed by the President of the United States, in accordance
with the provisions of section four of the Pacific Railroad Act, have made
a careful and thorough examination of your road and the telegraph line
connected therewith, and their favorable report has already been trans-
mitted to the proper authorities at Washington.

ROLLING STOCK.

There have been purchased, for use upon the first division, and are now

in daily use upon the road, five locomotives, six first class passenger cars,
two baggage cars, twenty-five box freight cars and twenty-five platform
cars.

In addition to which, there have been received one heavy freight loco-
motive and twenty freight cars, not yet put together.

There- have been purchased and shipped, four first class passenger
cars, two mail and express cars, twenty-four freight cars, twenty dump
(or gravel), cars.

Two more heavy freight locomotives have been contracted for vvith
Messrs. Danforth, Cook & Co., of Patterson, N. J., and are now in course
of construction. Extra axles, car wheels, locomotive tires, etc., have
been purchased and shipped.

The following table shows the size, weight, etc., of the engines now in
use upon the road :

NAMES

ENGINES.

2 H^
- g P-.

^ a> E
S"^ 2,
leg

o < —

c o =
m O o

: P.J"

o
o

a
<

re p"

o
>->

NAME

BUILDEE3.

EEMARK3.

47^

4
4
4
6
2
2
6
6

5
5

15
16
15
17

11
11

22
24

22 Wm. Mason & Co „..

15 Danforth. Cook <fc Co.

T D Judah

•Just received.

C. P. Huntington

Danforth, Cook & Co.
Danforth, Cook & Co.
Danforth, Cook & Co.

Tank Engine..
i Now being
\ constructed.

The rolling stock is all of the best class used on eastern roads. The
locomotives, with one exception, were built to order, and have thus far
given perfect satisfaction. Those now under construction are designed
particularly for service on heavy grades.

CONSTRUCTION OF THIRD SUB-DIVISION.

The work of grading above Newcastle was commenced in April last,
and has been steadily progressing since that time.

The cut through Bloomer Divide, which is the heaviest cut on the
First Division, being sixty-three feet in depth, and eight hundred feet in
length, through a hard indurated gravel, is now fully completed, and the
grading on other portions of the line is in a favorable state of progress.

The culverts are built of the very best quality of granite, which is
found in great abundance in convenient proximity to the work.

All of the unfinished work between Xewcastle and Clipper Gap, a dis-
tance of twelve miles, is of such a character as to admit of its rapid
prosecution, and the work upon this portion of the line can easily be
completed within four montns.

TRESTLING.

As much of the heavy work on your road (as has been noticed in for-
mer reports), occurs in crossing the depressions or gaps in the Divide

along which the line runs, it has been deemed expedient in some in-
stances to substitute trestling for embankments.

Trestling, properly constructed of Puget Sound pine and redwood,
will last from eight to ten years, and can then be replaced with embank-
ments, by transporting the material on the cars, at much less than the
present cost.

At Newcastle Gap, LpvelPs Gap, and at two points near Clipper Gap,
trestling has been designed, and timber for the structure at the former
place, is now arriving.

SECOND DIVISION.

The work of location on this division was commenced in July, one
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, but owing to the extremely
rugged character of the country, the progress of the survey was neces-
sarily slow, and but about eighteen and a half miles of permanent loca-
tion were made. New experimental lines were run some eight miles
further, and the preliminary location had been commenced, when, owing
to the lateness of the season, the party was withdrawn from the field.

The greatest difficulty encountered in the work of location, is that of
maintaining a continuous ascending grade, which, were it possible to ac-
complish, the maximum grade from the foothills to the Summit of the
Sierras, could be reduced below eighty feet per mile ; but as the frequent
depressions or gaps in the Divide, along which the line passes, render a
a continuous grade impracticable, they necessarily become commanding
points in the problem of location.

Thus, in order to pass the Illinoistown and Long Eavine Gaps, we are
compelled to maintain, for nearly eight miles, a very light average, and
in many places a level grade, making in that distance an altitude of but
one hundred and fifteen feet, while immediately following is a section of
three and a half miles of maximum grade.

From the commencement of the second division, the line passes along
near, and frequently upon, the Summit of the Divide, about two miles,
to the Lower Illinoistown Gap; thence along the American Eiver slope
for about one half mile, when it recrosses the Divide through Bear
Eiver Gap, (where a tunnel five hundred feet in length will be required,)
and thence follows the Bear Eiver Slope of the Divide three and a half
miles to Long Eavine. Some heavy work occurs on this portion ot the
line, but with the exception of the tunnel referred to, will not exceed
the average of the work on the last five miles of the first division. The
succeeding nine miles from Long Eavine to Gold Eun, comprises some
of the most formidable work encountered upon the western slope of the
mountains. Crossing Long Eavine at ahight of one hundred and fifteen
feet, the line curves sharply to the right, and passes with a maximum
grade along the steep, and in many places precipitous, side-hill of Eice's
Eavine, crossing a succession of short, steep side ravines and gulches,
and intervening spurs, to Cape Horn; which is a precipitous, rocky
bluff, about twelve hundred feet in hight above the American river.

The construction of the road around this point will involve much
heavy work, though the material encountered is not of a very formida-
ble character, being a soft friable slate, which yields readily to the pick
and bar.

The dip of the ledge is about seventy-five degrees, or nearly perpen-
dicular ; but as our line at this point crosses the line of stratification
nearly at right angles, the cuttings will admit of a much steeper slope
than can be generally adopted for that class of material.

The road around this bluff will necessarily be mostly in excavation, as
the construction of an embankment, even with a heavy retaining wall,
would in many places be unsafe, if not impracticable. Passing around
the lace of this bluff, with an aggregate curvature, in one direction, of
one hundred and eighty-six degrees, the line enters Bobbers' Eavine,
the western slope of which it follows for about one and a half miles to
Oak Summit, at the point where the old pack trail crosses the same.

Passing thence via Trail Summit, and along the side-hill above the
North Fork of the American river, encountering a number of abrupt,
deep ravines (some of which it will probably be necessary to cross tem-
porarily on trestling), the line enters Secret Eavine, which it follows for
about three fourths of a mile, and thence follows a tributary of the same
to its source, near the Illinoistown and Dutch Flat stage road, about one
and a half miles east of Madden's toll house. Thence the line runs near
the stage road to Secret-town Gap, which it crosses at the hight of fifty-
five feet. The crest of the ridge, or divide (between the American and
Bear rivers), is here so narrow as to barely admit of the construction of
trestle work, and the sinuous course of the line precludes the possibility
of using any other kind of wooden structure.

Trestling, strongly and substantially built of the best mountain tim-
ber, red fir, sugar pine, or tamrack, can safely be depended upon for five
or six years, and in the meantime, with the facilities for transportation
of material which your road will afford, such structures can be replaced
either with embankments or stone viaducts, as may be deemed most
advisable.

From Secret-town Gap to Gold Eun, a distance of two and a half
miles, the line passes around the northern or Bear Eiver slope of Cold
Spring mountain, encountering a succession of deep, abrupt ravines,
where some of the heaviest work on this division occurs.

One tunnel of about three hundred feet in length will be required on
this portion of the line.

At Gold Eun the line attains and thence follows the Summit of the
Divide, which presents a very uniform surface for nearly two miles, and
the work will be comparatively light.

Leaving the summit of the ridge near Bradley's reservoir, the line
bears to the left, and, following the Bear river slope of the hill, passes
one half mile south of, and three hundred feet above, the town of Dutch
Flat, to Toll's Mills, a distance of sixty-seven miles from Sacramento, at
which point the location survey was suspended. As before stated, the
experimental and preliminary location surveys were extended several
miles further, and I would suggest the propi'iety of resuming the surveys
at an early day, as the labor required to prepare this division for the
contractors will necessarily occupy several months.

As the line beyond this point cannot deviate materially from the line
of Mr. Judah's preliminary survey, I would refer you for a general de-
scription of the same to his report, made October, one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-two, pages eighteen to twenty-two.

The location surveys so far made have demonstrated the accuracy of
the preliminary survey made by Mr. Judah, and from my own knowl-
edge of the country east of the point to which the location has been
completed, 1 am satisfied that there will not be any material deviation
from the line established by him.

The peculiar location of your road, passing as it necessarily does near
the Summit of the Divide, and consequently crossing the ravines and
canons near their sources, precludes the necessity for large and expen-
12a

sive culverts, or other structures for the passage of water, but few places
occurring where more than forty or fifty feet area of water-way will be
required.

It will, however, probably be found advisable, as before suggested, to
adopt, as a matter of expediency, trestle or other bridging, for many of
the deeper ravines or gulches.

Rock for culverts, foundations, etc., can be obtained within a reasona-
ble distance, and frequently in the immediate vicinity of the work, and
timber suitable for bridging, etc., is everywhere abundant.

The construction of over one hundred miles of mountain road, and
that, too, across one of the most formidable ranges on the continent,
where so few important streams are crossed, and so small an amount of
expensive bridging actually required, will certainly present an anomaly
in the history of railroad enterprises.

GRADES.

The following table shows the distance (in miles) of the different
grades used upon the First Division, and eighteen miles of the Second
Division :

TABLE OF GRADES
ON LOCATED LINE OF CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD OF CALIFORNIA, FROM SACRAMENTO.

FIRST DIVISION.

SECOND DIVISION.

GR. PR. MILE.

NO. MILES.

GR. PR. MILE.

NO. MILES.

GR. PR. MILE.

NO. MILES.

9.33
3.32

42 ft.

.52

.38

Level

4.32

3 ft.

5 ft.

.95

.38

.70

1.32

2.55

.21

.57

1.40

.26

.57

.32

.38

1.48

.57

.19

4.78

.19

.07

3.28

.24

.40

.51

1.34

.23

.21

.38

.57

1.16

.38

.76

.31

100

.38

.19

105

12.99

105

9.33

50.00

18.37

TABLE OF ALIGNMENT,

SHOWING THE AGGREGATE LENGTH OP TANGENTS AND CURVES OF DIFFERENT RADII IN
LOCATED LINES OF C. P. R. R. FROM SACRAMENTO TO STATION 3,610.

FIRST DIVISION.

SECOND DIVISION.

RADII IN
FEET.

DISTANCE IN
MILES.

RADII IN

FEET.

DISTANCE IN
MILES.

RADII IN

FEET.

DISTANCE IN
MILES.

15,000
5,730
3,820
2,865
2,292
1,910
1,637
1,482
1,433
1,338
1,146

.10
.62
.44

1.39
.55
.55
.46
.08

2.79
.04

1.28

1,042
955
882
819
800
764
717
714
637
573

.09

4.75

.54

.48

.17

.14

4.25

.03

.36

.21

30.68

5,730

2,865

1,910

1,433

1,146

' 955

819

717

637

573

.23

.32

.21

.85

1.67

1.98

1.74

2.19

1.94

2.19

5.05

50.00

18.37

REVENUE.

In estimating the probable business of your road, when completed
across the mountains, the calculations are based upon actual statistics of
the freight and passenger business between this city and Nevada Terri-
tory, during the last three years. Though during the present season
there has been a marked depression of business in that direction, as
compared with the two preceding ones, it is not considered that any ap-
prehensions of a permanent decrease of the former business with that
region need be entertained. On the contrary, those best acquainted
with the resources of Nevada Territory, and the Great Basin towards
Salt Lake, are confident in the opinion that another season will witness
an animated revival of business in that direction, and that within two, or
three years at the farthest, it will largely exceed the business of one
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three.

The extent and character of the resources of the Territory occupying
the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin, are too
well known to require an extended notice here. The evidence afforded
by the daily" shipments of bullion, is sufficient to convince the most
skeptical of the richness and permanent value of the mineral deposits of
that region.

Hardly second in importance to the famous Washoe district, are the
Esmeralda, Silver Mountain, Humboldt and Eeese Biver districts, many
portions of which are already yielding rich returns for the capital and
labor expended in the development of their mines.

As the Eastern slope of the Sierras is but sparsely timbered, and, to-
gether with the Great Basin, is almost wholly unsuitable for agricultural
purposes, it is evident that the principal supplies of lumber and fuel, as
well as general merchandise and breadstuffs, must be furnished by Cali-
fornia. As illustrative of the immense consumption of lumber and fuel
in the mining districts, the following extract from the report of John F.
Kidder, Esq., Chief Engineer of the Yirginia and Truckee Eiver Kail-

road Company, made in April, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
three, furnishes some valuable information.

Stating that the average price of fuel in Virginia City, is "fifteen dol-
lars per cord," he says, " At Virginia, Gold Hill and Silver City, there
are at present two thousand houses, consuming daily forty cords of
wood ; forty-six steam quartz mills, consuming daily two hundred and
thirty cords; and nine hoisting engines, with a daily consumption of
twenty-seven cords, making an aggregate consumption of two hundred
and ninety-seven cords.

" There are daily used for mining and building purposes, one hundred
and twenty-five thousand feet, BM, of lumber and square timber, the
cost of transporting which cost twenty dollars per thousand, making an
annual consumption of one hundred and eight thousand cords of wood,
and forty million feet of lumber," which is more than three times the
amount estimated by Mr. Judah, in his report of one thousand eight hun-
dred and sixty-two, as a legitimate item of Washoe freight. Upon the
above estimate of Mr. Kidder, the Territorial Enterprise makes the fol-
lowing remarks :

" In the report of Mr. Kidder, the Engineer of the "Washoe Valley
and Virginia City Eailroad, that gentleman makes an estimate, which is
altogether too low, of the consumption of firewood in this city, Gold
Hill and Silver City, but which foots up one hundred and eight thou-
sand cords. We think the quantity approaches much nearer two hun-
dred thousand cords.

" Now where can this enormous quantity of firewood be obtained in
a year or two from this time ? At its present value here, which at a
very low figure may be set down at sixteen dollars to twenty dollars per
cord, it makes a sum approaching three hundred and fifty thousand dol-
lars for firewood actually paid out in cash, by but three towns, in a Ter-
ritory but three years old. There is no denying the proposition that we
will have to look beyond the limits of this Territory before many years
shall have elapsed for fuel with which to keep in motion the countless
number of mills that will eventually be in operation within our border.

" The importance of where our fuel is to come from cannot be over-
rated."

That this vast trade must be supplied from the inexhaustible forests of
California, and pass over your road, is too evident to require any argu-
ment for its demonstration. The road upon which Mr. Kidder reports
is designed to connect with your road at the most eligible point on the
Truckee, and will form a most important auxiliary to the business accru-
ing thereto.

THROUGH FREIGHT FROM CALIFORNIA.

Tlfe statement made by Mr. Judah, in his report for one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-two, of the amount paid for freight over one route
alone, to Nevada Territory, viz : five millions two hundred and fifty-six
thousand dollars, was received with incredulity by many who were un-
acquainted with the immense demands of the Washoe trade.

Yet reliable statistics show that the freight paid on shipments from
California across the mountains, in the year one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-three, amounted fully to two and a half times that sum, or
thirteen millions of dollars, which is twice the amount paid for freight
received at San Francisco from domestic and foreign ports during the
year.

Estimating the average price of freight from California to Nevada,

during the year (one thousand eight hundred and sixty -three,) at five
cents per pound, we have one hundred and thirty thousand tons of freight
transported by teams across the mountains, in one year, exclusive of
westward bound freight, such as minerals, lumber, etc.

Full statistics of the business of one thousand eight hundred and4
sixty-four, to date, have not been obtained, but from the data at hand, it
is fair to assume that freights for the years one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-two, three, and four, will average seventy-two thousand five
hundred tons.

It is also safe to assume that within three years this average will be
more than doubled, which amount, it will be seen, will but slightly ex-
ceed the business of one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and
that your road will, when completed, command fully four fifths of the
Nevada freight and travel, as competition by teams and stages will be
entirely out of the question.

This gives as a perfect safe basis for an estimate, one hundred and six-
teen thousand tons of freight per annum.

PASSENGERS.

The following extracts from published statistics are given to show the
data upon which the estimates of revenue from this source are based :

"During the months of August, September, and October, one thou-
sand eight hundred and sixty-two, the average number of passengers
over one route across the mountains was :

Stage passengers

In carriages and on foot.

Total per diem

105

" In the months of February, March, and April, one thousand e\gh%
hundred and sixty-three, the number of persons who crossed the moun-
tains on one route is estimated as follows :

Footmen.

Horsemen

Stage passengers

Total

6,607

833

3,154

10,594

Or an average amount of one hundred and nineteen per diem.

"For the six months ending January first, one thousand eight hun-
dred and sixty-four, the stages on one route alone carried ten thousand
five hundred through passengers," or an average of fifty-eight per day.

Allowing one half this number for other routes, and we have eighty-
seven through passengers per day. Add for those traveling by private
conveyances, eighty-seven, and we have a total of one hundred and
seventy-four passengers per day. This is believed to be a low estimate,
and not exceeding the average for the last three years.

It is a well established fact that travel is everywhere proportionate
to the facilities afforded for its accommodation, and were a railroad com-
pleted across the mountains to-day, the travel between California and
Nevada Territory would (with the present amount of business) be in-
creased at least fifty per cent. It is, then, safe to assume that with the
prospective increase of business, there will, at the end of three years, be
fully double the present amount of travel, or three hunded and fifty pas-
sengers per day.

Allowing one fourth of this number to go by other routes, there still
remains an average of two hundred and sixty-three passengers per day,
or a total of ninety-five thousand nine hundred and ninety-five per
annum.

ESTIMATED ANNUAL RECEIPTS IN GOLD COIN FROM PASSENGERS IN

CALIFORNIA.

Junction and other way passengers per day, both ways

Auburn passengers, including those from the lower portion of Ne-
vada County, per day, both ways

Illinoistown passengers, including those from Nevada, Grass Yalley,
and Sierra County, per day

Dutch Flat, including upper portion of Placer and Nevada Coun-
ties, per day

40
25
40
30

SUMMARY.

NO. PASSENGERS.

av'rage

AMOUNT.

$1 50
3 50

5 50

6 75

$21,900 00
31,937 50
80,300 00
73,912 50

14,600 Illinoistown passengers

10,950 Dutch Flat passengers ,

Total, in gold coin

$208,050 00

ESTIMATED ANNUAL RECEIPTS FOR FREIGHT IN CALIFORNIA IN GOLD COIN.

av'rage amount.

10,000 tons Auburn and way

27,000 tons Illinoistown, including Nevada, Grass
Yalley, Sierra County, lowa^Hill, Forest
Hilhjetc , .....

10,000 tons Dutch Flat and vicinity,

20,000 tons return freight, including stone

20,000 cords wood

10,000,000 feet B. M. lumber

Total receipts for freight

Add passengers.... ,

Total annual receipts from California business...

$4 00

$40,000 00

8 00
10 00

1 50

2 50
6 00

216,000 00

100,000 00

30,000 00

50,000 00

60,000 00

$496,000 00
208,050 00

$704,050 00

ESTIMATED ANNUAL RECEIPTS FROM THROUGH BUSINESS TO AND FROM

NEVADA TERRITORY.

FREIGHT, ETC.

116,000 tons merchandise

100,000 cords of wood

30,0,00,000 feet B. M. lumber

16,000 tons return freight

96,000 passengers, both ways

Express and mails

Total

Add for business in California

Total annual receipts in gold coin.
Deduct for expenses for operating, etc

Leaves net revenue of.

82,610,000

500,000

300,000

160,000

1,152,000

30,000

§4,752,000
704,050

§5,456,050
1,636,800

§3,819,250

Or twenty-five per centum per annum on a capital of fifteen millions
two hundred thousand dollars.

ESTIMATD RECEIPTS TO DUTCH FLAT.

Tour road will, when completed to Dutch Flat, command all the local
business of Placer, Nevada, Sierra, and a portion of El Dorado Counties,
as well as tbe greater portion of the Nevada freight and passenger busi-
ness, which is estimated as follows :

Annual receipts from passenger business in California (see
foregoing estimate) ...;

Annual receipts from freight in California (see foregoing es-
timate)

77,500 tons Nevada freight, §10

48,000 Nevada passengers, both ways, §6 75

Express and mails ,

Total annual receipts in gold coin

Deduct expenses of operating, etc

Leaves net revenue per annum

§208,050

496,000

775,000

324,000

20,000

§1,823,050
546,000

§1,277,050

Or twenty-five per centum upon a capital of five millions one hundred
thousand dollars.

LOCAL RESOURCES OF PLACER AND ADJOINING COUNTIES.

The development of the mineral resources of Placer and adjoining
counties, which embrace the richest mining district of the State, will add
largely to the local business of your road.

Besides the placer diggings of the foothills, and the heavier gravel de-
posits through the central and upper portions of the counties referred
to, which have heretofore occupied almost exclusively the attention of
the gold miner, the large and valuable veins of quartz which traverse
the whole western slope of the mountains are being prospected and
worked with success. Eecent discoveries of quartz of unusual richness
have been made in the vicinity of Illinoistown, and also on Diamond
Creek, Nevada County, within five miles of Bear Valley. Mills have
been erected and extensive preparations made for the reduction of the
rock. The development of the vein at the latter places indicates that it
will prove one of the richest yet discovered in that county. At numer-
ous other points in the vicinity of the line, important and promising
veins of quartz have been discovered, and with the fine water privileges
in the vicinity of these ledges, it only needs capital and enterprise to
develop a source of immense wealth to the country. The opening of
your road is already calling public attention to these facts.

At Gold Bun and Dutch Plat the railroad line crosses the rich vein of
auriferous gravel which stretches from Quincy and Pilot Peak, on the
north, through Downieville, Forest City, Moore's Plat, Alpha, Dutch
Plat, Iowa Hill, Forest Hill, Georgetown, and so on to the southern
mines, and in which the richest deposits of gold are found. At those
places, and at Bed Dog, Waloupa, Little York, You Bet, Yankee Jim's,
Michigan Bluffs, and other important mining towns in the vicinity of the
railroad, the mines are worked by the hydraulic process, and are yield-
ing rich returns. —

Copper ore is also found in the immediate vicinity of Auburn, and
between that place and Grass Valley. Some of these mines afford evi-
dence of great richness, and will undoubtedly, in time, be a source of
revenue to the road.

Soapstone of an excellent quality, and in inexhaustible quantities, is
also found near Battlesnake Bar, but a few miles from Newcastle. This
rock is an excellent substitute for fire-brick.

Limestone of a superior quality is also found at numerous points in.
the vicinity of the road. A large portion of the lime brought to this
market is from the kilns at Alabaster Cave, Lime Point, (two miles from
Auburn,) and the American river quarries, about one mile from Neils-
burg.

IRON.

Extensive beds of iron ore are found in the vicinity of Neilsburg, and
about one mile from the line of your road. This ore is of a superior
quality, and will yield from seventy to ninety per cent, of metal.

The high price of labor in this State has hitherto precluded the work-
ing of these ores with economy, and as yet no efforts have been made to
develop these mines, or even to bring them into public notice.

With the facilities afforded for the reduction of this ore, viz : the
cheap production of charcoal in the forests of the Sierras, and of stone
coal from the Truckee river mines, and cheap and abundant water power,
it is believed that within a few years capitalists will find this a profitable
field for investment, and that the transportation of this ore and its pro-
ducts will form an important item in the business of your road.

COAL.

The recent discovery and working of the coal mines at Crystal Peak,

near the Truckee river, and in the immediate vicinity of your road, is
an important fact for consideration in connection with your future busi-
ness. From accounts received, it is believed that coal of a superior
quality, and in inexhaustible quantity, has been discovered at the eastern
base of the mountains at the point named.

The lack of fuel between the Sierras and Salt Lake has always been
considered one of the greatest difficulties attending the working of that
division of the Pacific Eailroad. These discoveries will remove that
obstacle, and will also furnish a large amount of return freight to
California.

GRANITE.

I wish to invite your particular attention to the extensive granite
quarries in the immediate vicinity of your road. These quarries are
found at numerous points between Eocklin and Auburn, a distance of
thirteen miles, and for quality of rock are unsurpassed by any in the
State.

All varieties of color are found, from the darkest to the lightest, and
of every degree of hardness desirable for different classes of work.

The most important quarries yet opened are at Bocklin, within
twenty-two miles of Sacramento, which is a less distance than similar
quarries can be reached by any other road. The unusual cheapness with
which this rock can be quarried — the ledges being everywhere accessible
by spur tracks, thus avoiding the cost of intermediate transportation —
will, with the low rate of freight at which it can be delivered here, place
it in the market at a figure that will defy competition.

The quality of the stone alone would give it pre-eminence in the mar-
ket at even the present ruling rates. It is of a close, even texture, of a
light bluish color, and entirely free from the hard knots and discolora-
tions which render so much of the granite heretofore brought to this
market unfit for the best class of work.

It has received the unqualified approbation of the State Capitol Com-
missioners, and they have already contracted for the delivery of all the
granite required for the completion of the capitol building from these
quarries. The following is an extract from the report of Beuben Clark,
Esq., the able and experienced architect of the building, to the Board of
Capitol Commissioners :

"On the Pacific Eailroad line there has been discovered a most excel-
lent quality of granite. I visited the quarries, and found it in quantity
inexhaustible, and in quality free from all black knots and stains, and of
excellent rift."

These and other quarries upon the line of the road are now being
opened on an extensive scale, and preparations are made for bringing
large quantities of the stone into market at an early day, and it is
believed that within a few months you will be able to secure, and thence-
forth command, the entire granite trade of the State.

WATER POWER.

The value of the unlimited motive power afforded by the waters of
the Truckee, Yuba, and Bear rivers, and the facility and cheapness with
which it can be applied to manufacturing purposes, are facts worthy the
attention of capitalists. The rapid declination of these streams renders
them available at almost any point; and the dense forests of pine, fir,

and tamarack, growing upon their slopes, suggest a ready means of
securing the advantages which they offer. Abundant power can also be
obtained by using the water of the mining ditches, which, until transit
by rail is supplied, are in some localities more convenient of access than
the natural streams.

This water can be used without wastage, and consequently at but
trifling cost, as it will in no case be necessary to divert it from its
present channel, except for the short distance required to gain the desired
elevation.

Thus the Bear river ditch, which in the winter season carries three
thousand five hundred inches of water (miners' measure), and at its
lowest summer stage never has less than five hundred inches, can at nu-
merous points be used for the purposes mentioned.

Near Clipper Gap the water of this ditch runs for about three fourths
of a mile in the natural bed of a ravine, falling in that distance nearly
three hundred feet. At the head of Auburn Eavine, and within three
miles of the town of Auburn, it has, in about a mile, a fall of two hun-
dred feet ; and again, about one mile above Newcastle, it crosses the line
of the road and runs into Dutch Eavine, falling two hundred feet, in one
fourth of a mile.

There are other points also convenient to the line of your road, where
the same water can be used, with a fall of from twenty to forty feet.

Other ditches in the vicinity of Gold Eun and Dutch Flat, with a
larger supply of water, also present similar advantages.

The abundant power thus afforded may be considered permanent, as
the mining and agricultural interests will always demand a supply of
water fully equal to the present capacity of these ditches.

WOOD, LUMBER, ETC.

The importance of the wood and lumber trade that must eventually
accrue to your Company can hardly be over-estimated.

The completion of the first fifty miles of your road will render avail-
able a large amount of the timber lands adjacent to the line which are
now comparatively valueless ; and besides the importance of the carry-
ing trade already alluded to, an important item in the construction of
the road will be saved by procuring the timber and ties needed in the
immediate vicinity of the line.

For general use, the red fir is probably the best timber that can be
obtained until the road reaches the Yuba, where tamarack is found in
abundance. The latter is, in my opinion, the best timber produced in
this State for ties and other railroad purposes. It will resist decay as
well as redwood ; and in point of strength and elasticity, is probably
equal to the Puget Sound pine. The completion of the road to New-
castle has placed within reach of the Sacramento market large quantities
of the live oak, white oak, etc., growing upon the foot hills, which, for
lack of facilities for transportation, have hitherto borne but a nominal
value.

LANDS.

The lands granted to your Company by the National Government,
viz : twenty sections, or twelve thousand eight hundred acres, for each
mile of road, is now an important source of revenue for its construction.
You are now entitled to these lands for thirty-one miles, or a total of

three hundred and ninety-six thousand eight hundred acres, which, at
the minimum Government price, may be estimated as worth four hun-
dred and ninety-six thousand dollars.

Many of these lands bordering on the Sacramento, American, and
Bear rivers, are among the most fertile in the State. The value of the
timber products of the foothill lands has already been alluded to. Many
of the latter are also susceptible of a high state of cultivation. From
their peculiarity of soil they are particularly adapted to the cultivation
of fruit ; and in ordinary seasons, the cereals are grown with success.
With a proper system of irrigation these lands may be made highly
productive. For the production of the vine, they are considered as far
superior to the low lands of the valley, and this fact is already tested by
the successful cultivation of numerous and extensive vineyards. That
the wine producing districts of this coast will in future be confined
almost exclusively to the foothills, there can be no doubt.

FACILITIES FOR TRAVEL.

The present facilities afforded by your road, and the connecting stage
lines, for the accommodation of travel across the mountains, are un-
equaled upon any other route.

Persons traveling via the Central Pacific Pailroad, and the Dutch Flat
and Donner Lake Wagon Eoad, reach "Virginia City in from four to six
hours less time than by any other line. Since the California Stage
Company placed their coaches upon this line, in July last, the average
time for the trips from Sacramento to Virginia has been but seventeen
hours.

This road, which was commenced in one thousand eight hundred and,
sixty -three, and completed in June last, is by far the best road yet con-
structed across the mountains. It accomplishes the ascent of the western
slope of the Sierras with a much lighter maximum grade than has here-
tofore been deemed possible to attain within the limits of expense which
such an enterprise would justify.

The maximum ascending grade (eastward) is but ten inches to the rod,
or less than one half the maximum grade on the other most important
roads crossing the mountains.

It is constructed in the best possible manner, and is everywhere wide
enough for teams to pass each other without difficulty.

Commodious hotels have been erected along the route, and prepara-
tions are being made to keep the road open during the winter.

No difficulty is "apprehended in doing this, as the snow-fall is believed
to be much lighter upon this than upon the other routes, via the Henness
and Johnson Passes.

This comparative immunity from heavy snows, which frequently form
a serious obstruction to travel across the mountains during the winter
months, is chiefly due to the difference in altitude between this and the
other routes named, there being several hundred feet in favor of this
route.

The question of the obstruction of a railroad by snow, and the prac-
ticability of keeping the line open for business during the winter months,
is a very interesting and important one, and cannot be better answered
than has already been done by Mr. Judah in his report for one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-two, from which the following extract is
taken :

" The argument of obstruction from snow being frequently urged

against the Central route for the Pacific Kailroad, I have taken much
pains to arrive at correct conclusions upon this subject, and feel war-
ranted in the statement that a railroad line upon this route can be kept
open during the entire year for the transaction of its business.

" It is true that snow falls to a greater depth upon the elevated por-
tions of this line that upon the lines of railroads in the Atlantic States.

" The depth at which snow lies upon this route is plainly distinguisha-
ble at any season.

" The trees are generally covered with moss down to the level of the
snow, and thousands of them can be seen entirely free from moss up
to a certain hight, and almost entirely covered with moss from that
hight.

" Frequent marks have also been made by persons who have traversed
the route on snow shoes during the winter, by ax marks chopped in the
trees at the level of the snow.

"The limbs of the small trees also afford indications of the hight of
snow; those limbs lying beneath the snow maintaining their natural
or original position, while those above the snow line are almost univer-
sally bent downward, and not unfrequently broken by the weight of
snow.

" These observations lead to the conclusion that the greatest depth of
undisturbed snow is thirteen feet at the summit.

"In places were drifts occur, the depth is of course greater; and at
corresponding points, less than the average level.

" This may, at first, seem to be a serious obstacle to the passage of
railroad trains. But this depth of thirteen feet is not the result of a
single storm, but the accumulation of a number of successive storms,
occurring during the winter.

" Snow does not melt very rapidly at this elevation during the
winter.

"A storm will occur, and snow fall to the depth, perhaps, of three or
four feet.

" Another storm will, perhaps, add two or three, or four feet, to this
depth.

" Successive storms add to its depth ; but it is believed that its highest
level is not over thirteen feet.

" The town of Dutch Flat, sixty-seven miles from Sacramento, and
thirty-five miles from the summit, may be considered the foot of snow
line on western side — snow seldom falling more than two feet there, and
melting off in a day or two.

" The average depth of snow at lower end of Donner Lake is about
six feet.

" At Neil's Eanch, on the Truckee river, twenty-eight miles easterly
from the summit, I am assured by Mr. Neil that the greatest depth of
snow last winter was eighteen inches, and that during the five years he
has lived there it has not exceeded three feet in depth.

" It may be safely concluded that the line of deep snows terminates
where our line strikes the Truckee river, or say twelve miles from the
summit, making forty-seven miles of snow line.

" It will also be remembered that our line is almost exclusively a side-
hill line, from which the snow can be more easily removed than from a
level surface.

" It is only necessary, then, to start an engine with snow plows, from
the summit each way, at the commencement of a storm, clearing the

snow as it falls. A similar course of procedure at each successive storm
will keep the track open during the entire winter.

" It is also stated that a crust soon forms upon the snow, which pre-
vents its drifting badly.

" The only point where we shall encounter a level surface of snow is
in Summit Valley, for about two miles.

"By elevating the track at this point, no trouble need be anticipated.

" The great dread and real danger of a storm in the mountains does
not arise from the depth of snow, but from the entire absence of shelter
and relief in the mountains, there being no houses or accommodations,
excepting upon the wagon roads across to Washoe."

The "deep snow line" does not extend more than twenty miles west-
erly from the summit, so that the distance will not exceed thirty-two
miles where any greater difficulties need be apprehended than are
ordinarily encountered upon Eastern roads during the winter months.
In further illustration of this subject reference is made to the above
mentioned report^pages twenty-five to twenty-seven.

SURVEYS IN NEVADA TERRITORY.

An experimental survey was made in November and December last,
from the terminus of Mr. Judah's line, near the eastern boundary of Cal-
ifornia, to a point five miles east of the Big Bend of the Truckee, a
distance of fifty-three miles. The result of this survey was highly sat-
isfactory ; developing a line with easy grades and curves, and for the
greater portion of the distance, with very light work. At three
points on the experimental line, grades of seventy-nine feet per mile
were introduced, for short distances, but a careful location will reduce
the maximum to fifty feet per mile. The maximum curves will probably
not exceed six degrees, or a |radius of nine hundred and fifty-five feet.
The only heavy work occurring on the line will be through the canon
below the Big Meadows, and for a distance of about five miles, and even
there a large portion of the heavy cutting shown upon the profile may
be avoided by crossing the river two or three times at its narrowest
points. From the lower end of the canon to the Big Bend, the slightly
undulating surface of the country will admit of a rapid and easy con-
struction of the road.

At the Big Bend the line leaves the river, and bears eastward across
what is known as the Truckee Desert, towards the Sink of the Hum-
I boldt. Beyond the terminal point of the line no explorations were
; made, as from the well known character of the country to the eastward
\ no doubts exist as to the practicability of the route to the Sink of the
j Humboldt, and from that point to Salt Lake the choice of routes must
• be hereafter determined by proper explorations and surveys.

The present engineer force in the field consists of one party on con-
I struction of First Division, in charge of Mr. Chas. Cadwalader, and one
I party employed on location of Second Division, in charge of Mr. L. M.
! Clement.

Eespectfully submitted.

SAM. S. MONTAGUE,
Acting Chief Engineer C. P. E. E. of Cal.

REPORT

OF THE

SECRETARY OF THE C. P. R. R. CO.

' ' '.\

SECRETARY'S REPORT.

Office of the Central Pacific Kailroad Company, )

December 1st, 1864. J

business on the road.

On the twenty-sixth of April, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
four, the track was completed from Sacramento to Junction, a distance
of eighteen and one half miles, and trains were run daily over the
road to that point. Little freight, however, passed over the road until
the tenth of the following June, when it was opened to Newcastle,
thirty-one miles from Sacramento, and regular freight and passenger
trains commenced running to that point.

The following is a statement of the number of passengers transported
each month, and the amount received therefor :

April 26th to 30th

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

Total

& 354 25
4,291 25
9,364 30

11,047 35

10,107 14
8,801 22

10,089 90
9,347 74

5,403 15

13a

The following statement shows the amount received for transportation
of freight each month :

April 26th to 30th

May ,

June

July

August

September ,

October

November

Total

183

160
3,993
5,002
6,393
7,668 04
8,110 82
7,154 00

25
50

86
70

$38,666 89

There has been received for transportation of express matter and
messengers, $1,487 50.

The expenses of operating the road from April twenty-fifth to Decem-
ber first have been as follows, viz :

EXPENDED FOR

.Repairs of locomotives

.Repairs of cars

.Repairs of track \

Eepairs of buildings

Repairs of bridges

Locomotive service

Train service

Station service

Fuel and water

Oil, waste, etc

Stationery and printing

Advertising

Office expenses

Damage to freight

Miscellaneous damage

Taxes

United States revenue tax

Incidentals (fixtures for trains, depots, etc.)
For telegraph expenses

Total

November pay rolls not yet distributed

Total operating expenses

$ 3,089 95
3,234 47
9,520 41

251 95

1,343 64

3,666 73
3,634 49

6,953 54

5,746 12

842 38

565 00

836 75

75 95

141 67

137 00

10,051 61

1,060 14

449 18

8 00

$51,608 98
4,680 19

5,289 17

EECAPITULATION.

Passengers

Freight

Express

Gross receipts

Operating expenses ,

Net earnings in gold coin

563,403 15

38,666 89

1,487 50

?103,557 54
56,289 17

£47,268 37

Miles run by passenger trains, fourteen thousand and sixteen ; miles
run by freight trains, nineteen thousand four hundred and sixty-eight.

Average rate of speed of passenger trains, including stoppages, has
been twenty-two miles an hour. Average rate of speed of freight
trains, including stoppages, has been fifteen and one half miles an hour.

There has been but one accident to persons on the road during seven
months running. Frank Brady, an employe of the Company, in at-
tempting to get on a construction train in motion, was injured so as to
cause his death in a few days.

The earnings will be increased fully per cent, by the further extension
of the road, soon to be completed to Eock Creek or Neilsburg station,
forty-two miles from Sacramento, while the expenses for operating the
road to that point will not be materially increased.

E. H. MILLEE, Jr.,

Secretary.

SPEE O H

LELAND STANFORD,

PRESIDENT OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC R. R. CO.,

m THE

IEVAM CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

SPEECH IN CONVENTION,

ASSEMBLED AT CARSON CITY, N. T., TO FRAME A CONSTITUTION AND FORM

A STATE GOVERNMENT FOR THE STATE OF NEVADA,

ON THE 13TH DAT OF JULY, 1864*

Mr. WAEWICK, of Lander, said he desired to suggest a postpone-
ment of the subject then before the Convention, for the reason that ex-
Governor Leland Stanford, president of the Pacific Eailroad, was pres-
ent, and he knew that members desired to be enlightened in regard to
that important enterprise. He therefore moved that the rules be sus-
pended, and that the further consideration of this subject be postponed
for the present; and further, that the Hon. Leland Stanford be invited
to address the Convention on the subject of the Pacific Eailroad, and
also to answer any question which might be put to him by members on
that subject.

The question was taken, and the motion was agreed to.

REMARKS OF EX-GOVERNOR STANFORD.

The PEESIDENT introduced the Hon. Leland Stanford, of California,
President of the Central Pacific Eailroad of California.

Mr. STANFOEL— Mr. President, and gentlemen of the Convention:
I appreciate very highly the honor of this compliment which has been
awarded me. 1 may say 1 am very grateful for it, indeed. Devoting
myself, as I have done for several years past, and as I am doing at the
present day, to the construction of the Pacific Eailroad, I do not desire
merely to make a speech on this occasion, I desire rather that this inter-
view shall partake more of the character of a free conference, because I
am aware that every gentleman present is earnestly desirous of securing
the speedy construction of the Pacific Eailroad; not only the construc-
tion of the road across the mountains, but also the construction of the
road across the plains to some point that shall connect us on this coast
with the Atlantic States. This is the great want, not only of Nevada,
hut of the entire Pacific coast. It is not necessary, of course, that I
should dilate at all upon the advantages to be derived by the people of
this Territory from the construction of that road, either eastward or
westward; it is better, I imagine, that I should confine myself to point-

* Furnished the Senate Committee on Railroads by the Official Reporter of the Convention,
A. J. Marsh, in advance of the publication of the entire proceedings of the Convention.

ing out, as well as I am able, how these advantages may best be obtained.
To do so, I will refer somewhat particularly, and as briefly as possible,
to the position of the Central Pacific Eailroad of California, its present
condition, its prospects, its wants and its means.

You are well aware, gentlemen, that Congress, by the Act of one
thousand eight hundred and sixty -two, granted liberal donations in aid
of the construction of the Pacific Eailroad, limiting its aid only to the.
extent of one hundred millions of dollars. They also gave by that Act
six thousand four hundred acres of land to the mile for the construc-
tion of the road. Since that time, however, another Act has been passed
by Congress, amending that first Act very materially, making it much
more practical in its character. The first Act gave sixteen thousand dol-
lars per mile for building the road on the plains, and forty-eight thousand
dollars per mile over the mountains, and also thirty-two thousand dol-
lars per mile for passing through the Territories. That has been changed
by giving double the amount of land per mile, which was first allowed
the several companies. And further, by the former Act, the assistance
of the Government was made to become a first lien on^he road; but by
the Act of last session the Government gives the same assistance in
bonds per mile, but allows the Eailroad Company to make a first mort-
gage upon the road to an equal amount, so that now, when the Central
Pacific Eailroad Company receives forty-eight thousand dollars per mile
in Government bonds, they are allowed to make a mortgage, which will
be a first mortgage on the road, to the same amount, and they receive
the Government bonds in addition. And as the base of the mountains
has been determined by the President to be only about eight miles from
Sacramento, it amounts practically to assuring ninety-six thousand dol-
lars per mile towards the construction of the road, one half in the bonds
of the company, and the other half in bonds of the United States. This,
of course, is a large assistance, but still it is not sufficient of itself to con-
struct the road over the mountains, many miles of which will cost much
more, and very little of it from the present terminus will cost much less.
Therefore you will observe that the means of the company, so far as
credit is concerned, to wit : the first mortgage bonds of forty-eight thou-
sand dollars per mile of its own mortgage bonds, and the forty-eight
thousand dollars per mile of the Government bonds, especially if in cur-
rency, is not sufficient to construct the road.

The question therefore arises, how shall the necessary means be ob-
tained for building the road ? After the first mortgage made on the
road of forty-eight thousand dollars per mile, and then the Government
assistance becoming second mortgage bonds to the same amount, are ex-
pended, so far as borrowing is concerned, the means of the company
must necessarily be exhausted, because third mortgage bonds would be
of very little value if they were issued. Its dependence after that, there-
fore, becomes merely the stock subscriptions and the earnings of the
road. But in this country, where money is worth two per cent, per
month, or about that, on the average, it can hardly be expected that
there will be any large amount of stock subscriptions, especially where
an immediate return in money is not, and cannot be anticipated. There-
fore, so far as stock is concerned, we must depend upon foreign assist-
ance or subscriptions. A great point is to give confidence abroad in the
stock of the company, so that in time, as the road progresses, and is do-
ing a fine business, as no doubt it will, the company may entertain strong
hope that there will be such confidence abroad in the stock of this rail-
road that people in communities where money is not worth more than

five, six or seven per centum, at most, per annum, -will be willing to come
forward and invest in this railroad. On this side we have for some time
reached the conclusion that it is vain to seek for further subscriptions at
present to the stock. *

Now then, gentlemen, I hardly know how to address you in reference
to this subject, without appearing to interfere, perhaps, too much in your
deliberations; but I will say this, that if you desire to aid the Pacific
Eailroad, and I am quite sure you do, the proper and most effectual mode
of doing so is by assisting it over the mountains. This railroad is not a
mere California project, as some have alleged, or a project which inter-
ests only people outside of your own Territory. On the contrary, it is
an enterprise in which the people of this Territory are as much inter-
ested as any people in the world, and even more, for without it you are
isolated. The people of California do not need a railroad to Nevada so
much as the people of Nevada need a railroad to California. Now, my
idea is that the true way for you is to aid the railroad while it is passing
over the mountains; and that you may make yourselves entirely secure,
that whatever aid you give shall not be thrown away, or be misapplied,
you can say that your aid shall not come in until the road has reached a
certain distance from navigable waters, or from the Sacramento Eiver.
For instance, when it has reached fifty, or sixty, or seventy miles
into the mountains. It will then materially cheapen the means of trans-
portation, both of freight and passengers, and having done that, you can
say that we will give you so much, and then as it progresses this way so
much more for every ten miles further, until the amount which you are
willing to appropriate shall be exhausted. You can feel entirely sure
that after the road has reached the summit it will come this way as far
and as fast as the means of the company and the labor of men will per-
mit. So far as the Government aid is concerned, the Government as-
sistance, with a mortgage of thirty-two thousand dollars a mile, will af-
ford means amply sufficient to construct the road through your Territory.

Whenever it reaches the line, how fast it shall progress easterly is
only a question of how fast the track can be laid, because the grading on
the line selected can always be kept far in advance of the track.

The State of California, last winter, provided by law for the payment
of the interest on a million and a half of the bonds of the company for
twenty years. That is a very great and material assistance, not only be-
cause it pays the interest, and so far relieves the company, but also be-
cause it tends to strengthen the credit of the company, and so give con-
fidence to others who might desire to invest in the stock of the Company,
which is a very great point in any assistance of a public nature which
may be given to the road.

The present Company has constructed thirty-one miles of road, and
they have purchased the iron and rolling stock necessary for sixty miles,
all of which is paid for, and most of which has been delivered. The
freight money alone, on the material shipped from New York to San
Francisco, which we have paid out, has amounted to over two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars up to the present time. The Company owes
no floating debt ; all of its contractors are paid ; every article for the
road, all of its supplies, and the iron and rolling stock for the first sixty
miles, are paid for, and the Company owe nothing except the first mort-
gage bonds of the road, amounting to a million and a half of dollars, not
all of which, however, have yet been negotiated.

So far, this work has been done by the subscriptions of the individual
stockholders, and the assistance derived from the subscription of the

county of Sacramento, amounting to three hundred thousand dollars,
and the subscription of the county of Placer, to the amount of two hun-
dred and fifty thousand dollars. Most of the county bonds are yet
owned by the Company. None of the State or National aid has yet
been received by the Company, but nearly all that has yet been done
has been done by the individual subscriptions of stockholders. Thirty-
one miles of first class road have been constructed, and we are sup-
plied with all the rolling stock and iron necessary for sixty miles.
This, in brief, is the present condition of the road.

So far as the route is concerned, we took a great deal of pains to
ascertain which was the best route. I, myself, wrote a great many
letters to different men who were acquainted with various passes
through the mountains, and we made a reconnoissance of the different
routes supposed to be practicable, and finally became entirely satisfied
that the route selected is altogether the best ; allowing the road to bo
constructed at much less expense, and in much less time than by any
other route.

Now allow me to say this — and I only know what the action of the
Convention has been on the subject, by what I have seen in one of the
papers — that you propose to give your aid to the road only after it
reaches the Territory, and then to the first road that shall reach it.
Allow me, very respectfully, to say, that in my opinion, that action,
instead of aiding the road, is calculated to delay its construction, be-
cause you thereby raise a doubt as to whether or not this road, which
Congress has aided, which the State of California has aided, which the
counties of Placer and Sacramento have aided, and which the county of
San Francisco will aid, either to the extent of four hundred thousand
dollars without taking stock, or by a subscription of six hundred thou-
sand dollars, is a practical route or not. And you also say to people
abroad, when we go abroad to negotiate our securities, that there is a
doubt whether we have got the best route or not; and more than that,
that there may possibly be a parallel and rival road constructed. To
the extent to which you throw a doubt upon this being the only route,
when we go into the market to negotiate our securities, or to sell our
stock, to that extent you depreciate their value ; and to that extent, of
course, you prevent the construction of the road.

Now, gentlemen, if ever a railroad is to be built over the mountains —
and I trust it will be inside of three years, because I know it is entirely
practicable — it will be that one which has received the national aid.
Congress, while it donates in aid of the Pacific Eailroad over one hun-
dred millions of dollars, and gives it thousands of acres of land to the
mile, operates through the various companies already in existence, one
of which is the Central Pacific Eailroad Company of California ; and
whatever is done to assist those companies, to that extent co-operates
with the efforts of the General Government, and whatever is done to
antagonize the efforts of one of those companies, to that extent, of
course, antagonizes the efforts of the General Government to build the
railroad. This is, in brief, the view which I take of this subject. I do
not desire to occupy your time by making a speech. It is a question of
importance, it is true ; but I think it better that we should have rather
an individual and conversational meeting, than that I should endeavor to
make any formal speech. I should be pleased to hear the views of mem-
bers, and 1 will endeavor to answer any questions which gentlemen may
see fit to put to me.

Mr. FITCH — I will ask Governor Stanford, what is the average esti-
mated cost, per mile, of building the road from Sacramento to the State
line ?

Mr. STANFORD — The original estimate made by Mr. Judah, the
chief engineer, who made the surveys, was, that it would cost between
twelve and thirteen millions of dollars ; that, however, was prior to any
action of Congress giving assistance to the road, and it was not then
contemplated to build so good a road as the Act of Congress requires.
That requires a first class road, in every respect. A road might be built
which would, to some extent, answer the purposes of a railroad, at some
less expense. Since that time there never has been a complete estimate
of cost for a first class road, such as we are building.

Mr. De LONG- — I will ask the Governor this question. What do you
suppose the bonds of the State of Nevada for three millions of dollars,
at seven per cent, a year interest, could be negotiated for abroad, with-
out a railroad running to our borders ?

Mr. STANFORD— Eeally, Mr. De Long, without a railroad at least
contemplated, they would be very low in the market, in my opinion.

Mr. De LONG — Do you think they would sell in the aggregate for
more than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars ?

Mr. STANFORD — Yes, sir, I think they would realize over that
amount, and certainly with the prospect of a railroad ; because the mo-
ment it is certain that a railroad will be constructed, as it is well known
that you have mines here which that road will supply and develop, the
credit of the State would be enhanced. In view of the number of mines
now undeveloped, or partially developed, the fact that the road is to be
built, would give your bonds a very good standing in the market.

Mr. De LONG — How far from the present terminus of the road is the
Summit ?

Mr. STANFORD — It is one hundred and four miles from Sacramento
to the Summit.

Mr. De LONG — Then it is forty-four miles from that point on the
road to which you have the necessary supplies of iron and rolling stock
to the Summit. Is there only one Summit on your route?

Mr. STANFORD — There is only one to pass over. Through the east-
ern Summit the railroad follows the outlet of Lake Tahoe. It comes
through the Eastern Summit with a descending grade of forty-two feet
to the mile.

Mr. WARWICK — I desire to ask a question. Do you think, that if
the rate of interest on the negotiable paper of the State of Nevada
were ten instead of seven per cent., it would be much more easily nego-
tiated than at the rate proposed, which is seven per cent. ? and also that
it would bring a better price?

Mr. STANFORD— Oh, certainly.

Mr. NOURSE — Suppose we could not pay — and it is well known we
could not pay — seven per cent, interest, would it make the bonds any
more negotiable to fix the rate of interest at ten per cent ?

Mr. STANFORD — In that case I should suppose not.

Mr. FITCH — Does not Congress restrict the rate of dividends on your
stock to ten per cent. ?

Mr. STANFORD — Whenever it is above ten per cent. Congress re-
serves the right to restrict and limit it.

Mr. FITCH — I suppose that is the difficulty in regard to the subscrip-
tions in California ?

60 .

Mr. STAN FOED— Not altogether, Mr. Fitch. The difficulty is this :
This Company has the right to continue the building of this road until
it meets the other road coming from the East, and of course there will
he no cash dividends until that time, as all the means of the Company
will be used in pushing the road toward the East.

Mr. COLLINS — I understand that California, by her enactments,
agreed to pay the interest on the bonds of the Company to the amount
of a million and a half of dollars for twenty years to come.

Mr. STANFOED — Yes, sir j the interest being at seven per cent, per
annum.

Mr. COLLINS — The State does not propose to pay the principal
then ?

Mr. STANFOED — No, sir ; the Company pays the principal. The
payment of interest by the State makes the bonds very desirable, and
it is practically about as much assistance to the Company as if the State
paid the principal. It not only makes the bonds good, but it strengthens
the stock of the Company.

Mr. COLLINS — What is the highest grade in crossing the Summit
which the Company will have to overcome ? I mean the maximum
grade ; how many feet per mile ?

Mr. STANFOED — The maximum grade is one hundred and five feet
to the mile.

Mr. COLLINS — You now have thirty-one miles completed. "What is
the highest grade on that distance ?

Mr. STANFOED — We have four miles of the maximum grade of one
hundred and five feet, and there are three miles of between eighty and
ninety feet grade to the mile.

Mr. COLLINS — I believe there is to be an extensive tunnel somewhere
near the Summit ; is there not ?

Mr. STANFOED — The longest tunnel on the route, according to our
surveys, is one thousand and fifty feet, and that will take us more time
than any other one mile on the road ; but our engineers are confident
that they can run it inside of fifteen months.

Mr. COLLINS— Is that at the Summit ?

Mr. STANFOED — No, sir ; it is about seventy-eight miles from Sacra-
mento.

Mr. COLLINS — What is the number of tunnels that the Company
will have to make ?

Mr. STANFOED — I do not know. The tunnels which we originally
contemplated we find, on a more careful survey, are generally thrown
out, and this tunnel of one thousand and fifty feet our present engineer
thinks he can throw out entirely by a little more curve.

Mr. COLLINS — Without any more grade than one hundred and five
feet to the mile ?

Mr. STANFOED — Yes, we limit the grade to that ; we are limited,
by Act of Congress, to that of the Baltimore and Ohio road, the maxi-
mum grade of which is one hundred and sixteen feet to the mile; but
we find that it is not necessary to have any grade of more than one hun-
dred and five feet to the mile.

Mr. TOZEE — I understand you to say that no part of the Government
aid has thus far been used in the construction of the road ?

Mr. STANFOED— Not a dollar.

Mr. TOZEE — Then what are the contingencies ? Can you depend
upon the aid being granted to this road rather than to any other ?

Mr. STANFOED — Yes, sir ; because in the Act of Congress, the com-
panies to build the road and receive the donations are specified by name.
The Central Pacific Eailroad Company was organized under the laws of
the State of California, and was in existence anterior to the passage of
the Act of Congress ; and if you will observe — I have the Act here — that
Company is recognized in the Act of Congress, and the five companies
named are the only ones that, under the Act, can derive any aid — three
on the Eastern end, including the branches there, and then the Union
Company, and the Central Pacific Company, on this end. These are the
only ones which can receive any of the aid. The donations are specifi-
cally made to them. The Central Pacific Company has the right to
build eastwardly until it meets the other companies.

Mr. TOZEE — How soon, then, do you think the road on this side can
demand and receive any portion of the aid of the Government ?

Mr. STANFOED — Our Company is in a condition to demand a portion
of the aid immediately. Under the old law which provided for the con-
struction, after forty miles had been completed across the Plains, it was
provided that there should be an appointment of CommissionerSj and
until such Commissioners had been appointed, and reported, we could
receive no assistance from the Government ; but it allowed the bonds to
be issued for every twenty-five miles in the mountains. Now, our road,
commencing at Sacramento, runs into the mountains very soon ; but
there is no provision for granting us aid until we shall have forty miles
constructed. But the Act of last winter, I understand, provides for the
appointment of this Commission at once, and then we shall get the aid
immediately.

Mr. FITCH — I understand you to say that forty-eight thousand dollars
per mile will be received from the Federal Government; that the Company
have permission to raise forty-eight thousand dollars per mile more on the
road, in anticipation of the Government aid, besides the aid of a million
and a half from California, and the aid of four hundred thousand dollars
or six hundred thousand dollars from San Francisco, and the aid also
of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from the county of Placer,
and the three hundred thousand dollars from Sacramento County. 1 un-
derstand that you have all this aid from the counties as well as from the
State, and that in the expenditure of this aid you are restricted to the
State line.

Mr. STANFOED— The Pacific Eailroad Company, so far as its first
organization is concerned, had only the right to build to the State line ;
it was only organized for that purpose ; but, by the Act of last winter,
We have the right, so far as the State could confer it, to build eastwardly,
and the National Government has also conferred the right to do so.

Mr. FITCH — I understand that the money given by San Francisco,
and by the State, and by these counties, can be expended either within
or without the State of California, as the Company pleases.

Mr. STANFOED — Yes, sir, the entire subject is under our control.

Mr. FITCH — I believe you did not state the amount of the estimated
cost per mile.

Mr. STAJSTFOED— It will probably cost at least twelve or thirteen
millions of dollars for the construction of a first class road to the State
line.

Mr. DeLONG — Inasmuch as the appropriation heretofore proposed by
the Convention is not agreeable to you in its present form, and inasmuch
as if w#e make a direct issue of three millions of dollars in bonds, it will
not be worth much — take either horn of the dilemma-— what is it the
wish of the Company that we should do ? Let you alone ?

Mr. STANFOED — I would prefer that you should let us alone rather
than provide that the State shall grant assistance to the first road that
comes to the State line, and thereby impair confidence in this route.

Mr. DeLONG — We want to stimulate strife.

Mr. STANFOED — You can hardly expect to get two roads built across
the mountains, Mr. DeLong.

Mr. DeLONG — We do not want more than one, but we want that as
soon as possible.

Mr. STANFOED — There is no doubt but what the road that comes
across the mountains will be that one which the Government aids, and
this is the only Company now organized with a view to construct a road
over the mountains. There is no other company organized for that pur-
pose, and nobody else has proposed to construct a road further toward
the Territory than Placerville. So far as our present information goes,
we do not know that any other road will ever attempt to cross the
mountains.

Mr. DeLONG — Then I understand you to say that you prefer that
there should be no donation at all, rather than to limit it as this propo-
sition is now limited ?

Mr. STANFOED — I do not know exactly what you have done.

Mr. DeLONG — We propose to give fifty thousand dollars a mile for
every mile of railroad that shall be built within our Territory, to the
Company that shall first construct a road to this Territory, which shall
connect us with navigable waters. That proposition is contained in our
constitutional provision as it stands now. We have either got to make
the appropriation outright, to leave it for the company to call for the
first appropriation in bonds which shall first reach our borders, or else to
make no appropi'iation at all. Which of the three measures would you
advise ?

Mr. STANFOED— With the exception of the implied doubt as to the
company which has the ability to construct the road, there is no partic-
ular objection that I see. Of course, when we get our road over here
we should be very glad to receive this aid to construct the road along
through the Territory, as our hope is not to be delayed too long in get-
ting across the mountains. But as I said before, the loan is not really
necessary to get across the Territory. The Government aid being a
second lien, makes the mortgage bonds of the Company good, and that
insures the completion of the l'oad across the Territory as fast as the
track can be laid, so soon as once the mountains are overcome.

Mr. DeLONG — Then the proposition would suit you very well if that
part was stricken out which provides for giving it teethe first company,
thus leaving out the doubt as to whether or not there can be another
company or road which is likely to cross the mountains first.

Mr. STANFOED — That would suit us so far as going through the
Territory is concerned, but really that is no concern to the Pacific Eail-
road Company, because the Company is confident of its ability to push
the road after we once reach the State line, as then the difficulty of
crossing the mountains will be entirely surmounted.

Mr. DeLONG — Then you ask that whatever appropriation is made
shall be made so as to be available as soon as possible, so as to allow you
to use it on the mountains or elsewhere, as you please.

Mr. STANFOED— Yes, sir.

Mr. DeLONG — Would it be any advantage to you to appropriate three
millions in bonds that would not sell for over one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars ?

Mr. STANFORD— It would only aid the road to that amount, and
that would be too great a sacrifice to make; but I think, nevertheless,
that with the prospect of a railroad reaching the Territory at an early
day, we may be quite confident that these bonds would stand well in
the market, because not only yourselves here, but the people in Califor-
nia, and in fact the whole world, have a very high estimate of the natu-
ral resources of your Territory, and the moment you have a reasonable
means of communication for freight and passengers, you must have a
population, and the bonds of the State of course will be valuable. But,
after all, while we are coming over the mountains is the time to give us
effectual assistance. As to whether the bonds should be issued or not, is
another question. You are as much interested in the bonds as the Rail-
road Company is, but if you prefer not to issue the bonds, I can only say
that the people of the State of Nevada would be very welcome to take
stock in the road, and they could assist us in that way.

Mr. DeLONG- — We should object to this issuing of three millions
dollars in bonds, if it is not going to do considerable good.

Mr. STANFORD — You could give the aid in a very efficient and ac-
ceptable shape by providing for the payment of the interest on the bonds
of the Company as California has done.

Mr. DeLONG— To what amount ?

Mr. STANFORD — As much or as little as you choose.

Mr. KINKEAD — When will the road be finished as far as you have
the material now on hand ?

Mr. STANFORD— During the coming winter, we expect. Allow me
to state why it has not gone forward faster this spring and summer.
We have as yet received nothing from San Francisco, nor from the Na-
tional or State aid ; neither have we made a mortgage such as was con-
templated by the California Legislature of last winter. There is a mil-
lion and a half, of course, of very desirable securities which we could
place in the market, but we have not done so because we did not know
exactly how it should be done until Congress should take the action
which it did take at the last session. Now, as soon as we receive the
bill passed by Congress, and get all the details, we shall make that mort-
gage, and of course we shall push the work forward. It will take only
about six months to complete that portion of it after we fairly set to
work.

Mr. KINKEAD — That is, if you get the means.

Mr. STANFORD — With the State aid and our assets we are abun-
dantly able to complete the sixty miles.

Mr. FITCH — Do you propose that these bonds which you are about
to issue shall be first mortgage bonds ?

Mr. STANFORD— Yes, sir.

Mr. FITCH — Then the State guarantees only the bonds ?

Mr. STANFORD— No, sir. The State only pays the interest for
twenty years. It actually pays that interest, so that, in addition to the
credit of the company as a guarantee, we have for the interest the credit
of the State.

Mr. KINKEAD— The State does not pay the principal ?

Mr. STANFORD— No, sir. That is to be paid by the Company.

Mr. PARKER — Is there any company which has a charter from the
eastern line to California, already granted by the Nevada Legislature,
through the Territory ?

Mr. STANFORD— No, sir.

Mr. HAWLEY — That is a question which I wished to ask" I do not

quite understand whether any contingency could arise by which the aid
granted by the United States could be received by any other Company.

Mr. STANFORD — No, sir; except that Congress may repeal or modify
the act, which is not very likely. Under the act of this winter, how-
ever, they have reserved the right to repeal or modify it.

Mr. HAWLEY — Then no other company can receive it on the western
slope ?

Mr. STANFORD— No, sir.

Mr. HAWLEY — That question arose on the framing of the language
of the section. The language employed was " Some one company," and
I opposed it because I thought it was leaving the matter open for the
purpose of exciting a contest between the companies. So far as 1 am
concerned, I was willing that the aid should be restricted to the Com-
pany which you represent, provided there could be no such condition
of affairs that the Government aid could go to some other company.

The PRESIDENT— I would like to ask Governor Stanford a question.
How far has the line of the road been surveyed or located ?

Mr. STANFORD— To the State line, or rather to the Big Bend of the
Truckee.

The PRESIDENT— Do you regard the Summit as the State line ?

Mr. STANFORD— No, sir. We strike the State line about four miles
from where the Henness Pass road crosses the Truckee river.

The PRESIDENT— Do you recollect the distance in miles?

M. STANFORD — The distance as we ran it originally was one hun-
dred and forty-four miles. To the Summit the distance was one hundred
and four miles.

The PRESIDENT — It has not been surveyed and located beyond that
point to the east ?

Mr. STANFORD— Yes, sir, to the Big Bend of the Truckee.

The PRESIDENT— What is the capital stock of the company ?

Mr. STANFORD— Eight millions of dollars.

The PRESIDENT— How much has been subscribed ?

Mr. STANFORD — Between eight hundred thousand and nine hundred
thousand dollars by the individual stockholders, and two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars by the county of Placer, and three hundred
thousand dollars by the county of Sacramento.

The PRESIDENT— What amount of that capital has been actually
paid in ?

Mr. STANFORD — Between five hundred thousand and six hundred
thousand dollars. The Government aid, you will see very readily, can in
no manner be diverted from the Central Pacific Railroad, except through
its own laches. Under the recent Act of Congress, the time of the con-
struction has been extended so as to require twenty-five miles to be
completed next year, twenty-five miles the year thereafter ; and it is for
the interest of the Company to push it forward as fast as they have the
means to do so," and the earlier it is completed the better.

Mr. De LONG — Then I understand that the Company would rather
we should guarantee the interest on the bonds of the Company, than to1
give the bonds of the State ?

Mr. STANFORD — No, we would rather have the bonds.

Mr. DeLONG — If we give you two hundred and ten thousand dollars
annually, as a donation, which is the interest on three millions of dollars
of bonds at seven per cent., that would be double the amount which Cal-
ifornia has given, or nearly so ?

Mr. STANFORD — Allow me to say, that I have entire confidence that

the stock of the Company will eventually be very valuable, and I can-
not ask for the assistance of any State, except so far as it may be neces-
sary to secure its construction, and if the Territory of Nevada, or the
State of Nevada, when it becomes a State, agrees to pay the interest on
the bonds, wbich would make them about as good in the market as if
the State gave her own bonds — in other words, it would furnish about
the same amount of means toward the construction of the road ; that is
really all the Company can ask. We do not ask anything to save the
stockholders — nothing except to inspire confidence; to make the credit
of the Company good abroad.

The PRESIDENT— The bonds of the Company bear interest at seven
per cent., and the Sacramento and Placer county bonds a like rate, do
they not?

Mr. STANFORD — No, sir; the bonds of Sacramento and Placer coun-
ties bear eight per cent, interest.

Mr. EARL — Where is the western terminus of the road ?

Mr. STANFORD — Under the organization of the Company, it was the
State line.

Mr. EARL — No, no ; I mean the western terminus.

Mr. STANFORD— Oh, the western terminus; under the Act of Con-
gress, it is a point at or near San Francisco, or the navigable waters of
the Sacramento river.

Mr. EARL — Is not the terminus to be at Goat Island?

Mr. STANFORD— I am not fully posted here. I have not seen the
amended bill, but I think it provides for an organization to run a road
from Sacramento to Coat Island. The Company has a right to construct
a railroad to San Francisco, if it chooses to do so.

Mr. EARL — By this language, if it be construed that this is the road
which is to get the land from the Government, will not the doubt arise
as to whether you would get the aid from the counties, and also from
San Francisco?

Mr. STANFORD — So far as relates to the construction of the road to
San Francisco, there may be some doubt; but over the mountains, there
is no doubt whatever, because the Act of the Legislature provides spe-
cifically that six hundred thousand dollars shall go to the Central Pacific
Company, and four hundred thousand dollars to the Western Pacific
Railroad Company.

Mr. CHAPIN — What is the distance from the head of the Truckee
Yalley to the summit, or somewhere there ?

Mr. STANFORD— I think it is some forty-two or forty-three miles.

Mr. CHAPIN — If that summit were the State line, all that forty miles
would be in this Territory ?

Mr. STANFORD— Certainly; the line of the railroad follows the
Truckee down a rather crooked course for a great many miles. We
found that some gentlemen were constructing a wagon road through
there, and their original idea was to brine: it down to the Truckee di-
rectly, but they found that the distance would be no less than by taking
the Henness Pass route, and striking across Dog Mountain. All the dif-
ficulty is on the mountains. There is an opening in the'mountain there,
and from there down to O'Neal's there is no trouble about the road. All
the difficulty is in the mountains, and it is all passed when you get to the
State Line.

Mr. COLLINS — I understood that the road would have been com
pleted before this time, but for the want of funds?

Mr. STANFORD— Yes, sir.
14a

Mr. COLLINS — I understand there has been some embarrassment in
the operations of the company, or that the progress of the road has been
delayed ?

Mr. STANFORD — Only delayed ; the company has not been embar-
rassed.

Mr. COLLINS — I hear it has not gone ahead as fast as it would have
gone, if there had been funds enough?

Mr. STANFORD — No, sir. You see we were practically more than
six months removed from the source of supplies. The ground was
broken for the construction of the road a year ago last January, but we
had to go East and purchase iron and rolling stock, and from the time
we started, independent of the time we were necessarily delayed in ne-
gotiating, somewhat more than six months were consumed in the pur-
chase and transportation of the material. Indeed, some materials which
we purchased a year ago, and paid for at the time in the securities of the
company, have not yet arrived. We were delayed some time in getting
our locomotives; the Government was requiring the services of most of
the effective force in building locomotives for its own use, and we could
only get them at such times as they could be afforded by the Govern-
ment.

Mr. COLLINS— Do you think that if this State shall give bonds for
one, two or three millions of dollars, or agree to pay the interest for an
indefinite period of time on the bonds of the company, that would really
facilitate and hasten the completion of the road across the mountains?

Mr. STANFORD— It would, very much.

Mr. COLLINS — Probably how much time would it forward the com-
pletion of the road?

Mr. STANFORD— Well, I feel entirely confident that if the State shall
pay the interest — not guarantee it, because I do not consider that that
would be any very great assistance, for we never intend to have the
bonds come to protest, and a guarantee, therefore, would be very little
assistance — but if the State paid the interest, it would be a very great
assistance, and practically nearly to the same extent' as though the State
issued her own bonds. You will consider this, that we have thirty-one
miles already constructed and paid for, and the rolling stock and iron for
sixty miles already provided, and we owe nothing for all that except a few
first mortgage bonds, a million and a half of which we have issued, but
only a portion of that amount have been negotiated, and everything else
in the way of assistance is untouched. Besides we have the interest on
our bonds to the amount of one million and a half of dollars paid by the
State of California.

Mr. KINKEAD— Is that a donation ?

Mr. STANFORD — Yes, practically, with the exception that we do
some services for the State as a consideration. Things which are to go
to the State Fair are to be carried free, and arms and munitions of war,
etc., are to be transported free. We issue our own bonds whenever we
please, and we are able to put the bonds into the market at once, and
then, almost immediately, we will be able to derive the benefits from the
Congressional aid on thirty-one miles which we have completed. We
will have that aid to assist us in completing the work. We can make
our first mortgage bonds equal to forty-eight thousand dollars per mile
on the thirty-one miles completed. There is, besides the four hundred
thousand dollars which we are about to receive from San Francisco, if
the compromise now proposed shall be carried out in good faith, as I
think it will be; and if it is not carried out, then we shall receive six

hundred thousand dollars in bonds from San Francisco, giving in return
six hundred thousand dollars in stock, and these are the immediate as-
sets of the company for the prosecution of the work. Now, if this Ter-
ritory, on becoming a State, shall promise to pay the interest on the
bonds of the company to any extent, to that extent the bonds would be-
come very marketable. They would be good securities and bring a good
price in the market at once, and in addition, you will see the advantage
of all these donations made directly to the company by strengthening
its standing abroad. The effect is that you make the stock desirable.
Our idea is to push forward the work as rapidly as possible, and when
we get it completed for a distance of seventy or eighty miles, we shall
have demonstrated, not only the practicability of the enterprise, but also
that it has a practical value as an investment, so that we shall have no
difficulty in selling our stock, and thereby realizing a large amount
of funds with which to finish up the road.

Mr. NOURSE — What effect upon any guarantee or agreements to pay
interest on the bonds of the company would the exemption of mines
from taxation have?

Mr. STANFORD — I do not know what would be your means of rais-
ing a revenue in that event.

Mr. NOURSE — Are you much acquainted with the means of raising
revenue which the Territory possesses?
Mr. STANFORD— 1 am somewhat.

Mr. NOURSE — Have you noticed the expenditures and the income
for the last year under the Territorial organization ?
Mr. STANFORD— Well, not particularly.

Mr. NOURSE— Are you aware of the fact that with the Federal Gov-
ernment paying the Federal officers we have already run behindhand —
that we are already two hundred and fifty thousand dollars behindhand,
independent of city and county indebtedness?
Mr. STANFORD— I was not aware of it.

Mr. NOURSE — Are you aware that the expenses for fourteen months,
which includes only one thousand six hundred dollars of interest, amount
to nearly six hundred thousand dollars, with an income of only forty-four
thousand dollars?

Mr. STANFORD— I was not.

Mr. NOURSE — With these facts carried before Wall street brokers,
with this insight into our financial affairs, what do you think would be
the probability of negotiating our bonds at a figure to make it a paying
operation ?

Mr. STANFORD— I do not think that showing would materially affect
the bonds.

Mr. NOURSE — Suppose you had the further fact that, notwithstand-
ing the small amount of income, the people of Storey County, our most
wealthy county, were taxed two dollars and seventy cents on every one
hundred dollars worth of property for the past year, and that out of all
that we got only a small per centage for State purposes ?

Mr. De LONG (in his seat) — Oh, that is nothing for a Sacramento man
to consider !

Mr: NOURSE — Suppose that fact were known, and it were also under-
stood that we, as a Territory, had run behindhand two hundred and
forty-four thousand dollars, and that the Territory had only an income
of about forty-four thousand dollars a year — suppose, I say, it were
known that the expenses were so much larger than the income, as shown
by these figures, what would be the advantage to you of that agreement

on the part of this State to guarantee or to pay the interest of your
bonds?

Mr. STANFORD— I think you hardly put the case fairly. If the rev-
enues of this State were not to be largely increased, of course there
would be no great value in its securities. But so far as the rate of taxa-
tion is concerned, you should consider it in proportion to the rates paid
for the use of money, which is often three and four per cent, in this coun-
try. . I believe two and a half per cent, is about the usual monthly rate
here, and compared with that the rate of taxation is very light. It can-
not be more in proportion than one and a half or two per cent, per month
interest, and yet there are cities and towns where people pay taxes
amounting to three, four and five per cent.

Mr. NOUE.SE — Would it not be of more advantage to your company,
as regards giving you credit abroad and assuring the desirability of your
stock, if it were known that after, or soon after, this railroad should
reach the State line — which would develop our resources and give us a
population, thereby rendering the State able to do something — that then
the State would give you outright the amount of three millions of dollars,
at the rate of fifty thousand dollars per mile — that the State would not
lend, but give it outright? Would not that help you much more than it
would to give you our bonds now, or as soon as we get to be a State,
and with our present condition of finances?

Mr. STANFORD — I think not; because abroad, where most of the
securities must be negotiated, the great point is to inspire confidence that
the road will be constructed over the mountains, and there will always be
a doubt until the ability of the company is made apparent. It is necessary
not only that the company should have the ability, but also to make that
ability apparent to the parties with whom we have to deal.

Mr. HOVEY — I would like to correct the gentleman from Washoe
[Mr. Nourse] in one respect. The county of Storey alone has paid
fifty-seven thousand dollars into the Territorial Treasury during the last
year.

Mr. CHAPIN — With many thanks to Governor Stanford for the valu-
able information he has given us, I suggest that we now proceed to regu-
lar business.

Mr. COLLINS — I propounded one question to the Governor, but his at-
tention was diverted from it so that he did not answer it. My question
was this : How much by the appropriation or provision for the loan of
the credit of the State, or a guarantee of the bonds of the company by
the State, say for a certain definite period, to an amount of one, two or
three millions — how much by that means would we be enabled to hasten
the completion of the road to the State line ? Would it hasten it one
year — a year and a half, or six months? For instance, suppose when
it reaches a point sixty miles this side of Sacramento we guaranteed
the payment of seven per cent on one million ; when it arrives at a
point eighty miles this side of Sacramento, a million more, and when it
arrives at a distance of one hundred miles from Sacramento, or at the
State line, a million more?

Mr. STANFORD — Of course I can only approximate to it, but I will
say this : That with the knowledge of the fact that this State would give
the interest upon a certain amount of bonds, we could proceed with en-
tire confidence in the expenditure of the money raised on the bonds
which we are already authorized to negotiate at the present time. By the
time the road is constructed up to about sixty miles from Sacramento,
the balance of the road, to fifteen miles of the summit, might be ready

for the track, and when that is done there is no one section that has any
obstacle to delay it. We could proceed at once to use the present securi-
ties with entire confidence, knowing that by the time they are exhausted
we shall have reached a point where we may receive the aid from this
State; and these bonds would be negotiable in the market. Therefore I
think that with that assistance we could construct the road as fast as any
adequate amount of means would permit, and we could finish it inside of
three years probably.

Mr. COLLINS — Do you think that this aid would give us the road
one year sooner than we could have it without?

Mr. ISTOUESE — Do you mean by the payment of the interest or the
agreement to pay it?

Mr. COLLINS — I mean not an agreement only, but the actual pay-
ment of the interest.

Mr. STANFOED — I must say that I could not say that it would make
a difference of a year. It might make more difference, but I should be
surprised if by some means we do not push the road forward to this Ter-
ritory inside of three years. It is my ambition to do so. But the great
object, as I have said, is to inspire confidence abroad.

The PEESIDENT— Do not you think that this road .will be con-
structed without any aid from this Territory?

Mr. STANFOED — I think it will be, but perhaps not so soon.

The PEESIDENT — Then with this guarantee of interest at seven per
cent on the bonds of the company, how much sooner could that road be
constructed to the State line than it would otherwise be?

Mr. STANFOED — It is very difficult for me to say, because so much
depends upon our foreign relations and the condition of the whole coun-
try. The standing of our bonds and the standing of the Government
bonds will have to be governed by events in the future; of course, what
will be our condition in the future it is impossible to say; nor how our
securities are going to stand within a certain length of time. But this
is certain : that if this State comes in and lends her aid, to the extent
that she gives that aid, it will help the road ; and more than that, it will
strengthen the bonds of the company abroad, and also the stock. For
instance, if the road were to cost three millions, with a million and a half
of aid, you will enable us to build tho whole of it, because the amount
required to build a portion of the road secures the construction of a good
deal more. Whatever is donated becomes a security for nearly an equal
amount in addition, so that the donation of a million and a half from the
State, becomes equal, so far as the construction of the road is concerned,
to nearly three millions of dollars. Then, in addition to that, the road
having received the donation makes the stock of the company more de-
Birable in the market, and in that way the resources of the company and
its means to build are increased. I may say, that a million and a half
donated by the State, equals twice that amount toward the cost of the
construction of the road.

The PEESIDENT— Then three millions would be equivalent to six
millions towards the construction of the road ?

Mr. NOLESE — I wish to ask one more question. What is the short-
est radius of any curves on your road, and whereabouts do they occur ?

Mr. STANFOED — As to the curves, our shortest is a five hundred feet
radius, although we run out of Sacramento, at present, with a curve of
two hundred and twenty-five feet radius,

Mr. NOUPiSE — Do these curves come upon heavy grades?

Mr. STANFOED— Some of them; yes, sir. Of course we avoid hav-

ing curves upon sharp grades as much as possible, hut we reach the ele-
vation of seven thousand and thirty feet in a distance of one hundred
and four miles, so that the grade is very regular. We have curves of
this kind for at least four miles on the maximum grade, on the part we
are now running, but only one engine is required to surmount these
curves. The locomotive Pacific, which is not so large as one we have
coming out, drew up to Newcastle one train containing over four hun-
dred passengers, with only one hundred pounds of steam. There were
eight cars, and each had about sixty passengers.

Mr. NOURSE — One engine hauled the train up the one hundred and
five feet grade ?

Mr. STANFORD — Yes, sir; I was on the engine at the time. We had
only one hundred pounds of steam on, and sometimes a little less. We
had certainly over four hundred passengers on the train.

Mr. COLLINS — One object in postponing the issuance of the bonds
was the idea that the State would be in a better condition at a future
time to meet the issuing of so large an amount than it is at present. As
you rather demur at the action of the Convention, I would ask which
would be most agreeable to the company — for instance, to issue the bonds
from time to time, as the work progresses on the other side, until the
road reaches the State line, to make the payment from time to time un-
til the million and a half is paid, or until the road is completed, or to pay
the interest on the million and a half of bonds as they are issued by the
company?

Mr. STANFORD — The object is, to get across the mountains. I will
say this, that if the State is not to issue the bonds until seventy miles of
road are completed, the State will then certainly be in the receipt of con-
siderable benefit from the road. In the next place, when we'reach the
seventy miles, and make the proper proofs, then only the company may
issue the bonds guaranteed by the State, and the first installment of in-;|
terest probably would not be payable under six months at any rate from
that time, so that it would necessarily take a considerable time before
the State could be called upon to pay anything at all. And long before
she would be called upon to pay them, she would be deriving far more
than an equivalent in the way of benefits from the road. For instance
now there are six daily coaches running from the termini of the rail-
roads running from Sacramento toward this Territory, and the proba-
bility is that these coaches take fifty passengers up and carry fifty pas-
sengers down, at a cost of about twenty-five dollars for each passenger,
so that there must be two thousand five hundred dollars a day paid out
by the people of this Territory for passengers alone. Now, the most we
could charge under the laws of California would be ten cents a mile for
passengers and fifteen cents a ton for freight, and the Territory would
save on passenger travel alone not less than the handsome sum of three
hundred thousand dollars a year, even if the railroad company should
charge the maximum prices allowed by the law of the State of California.
Mr. CHAPIN — Have you any reliable data in regard to the amount
paid for freight and for passengers during the last year, to and from
California ?

Mr. STANFORD— We have got such estimates as we could on that
subject from several firms in Sacramento, and also in regard to the team-
ing across the mountains. The amount paid out in Sacramento for
freights, the past -year, was from ten to twelve millions of dollars, and
Mr. Swain, a large wagon road owner, estimates it at twelve millions. I
know that Whitney & Co., of Sacramento, some time along last fall— in
November, I think it was — showed us their books, and also made an af-

fidavit to the effect that they had paid out for goods forwarded from
there during the season, over one million seven hundred thousand dol-
lars; that was from one single firm. D. W. Earl & Co. have paid out
probably about the same amount.

Mr. NOU-K.SE — Are not these the principal firms ?

Mr. STANFORD — There are several firms which do about as large an
amount of business.

Mr. De LONG- — And many goods are sent here from Marysville also-

Mr. STANFOBD — I did not take any account of the Marysville trade,
though I know there is avast amount of goods shipped from there to the
Territory. Taking the amount of freight brought by the several routes
last year as a basis, the railroad line would probably save to the Terri-
tory at least eight or ten millions of dollars a year. That is according
to the best data we can obtain. And it would save about two thirds on
the bullion shipped. I do not remember the exact amount of bullion.
We have had the wagon roads estimated from the tolls received.

Mr. NOURSE — You add them to the estimate of the amount shipped
in Sacramento ?

Mr. STANFORD — No, sir; that is independent of these estimates.
Mr. Swain's estimate of the whole was twelve millions of dollars.

Mr. NOURSE— Probably, on the other hand, Whitney & Co. and D.
W. Earl & Co., forwarded about a quarter of the whole amount shipped
last year.

Mr. STANFORD — Probably not a quarter, as a large amount comes
also from Stockton, such as the produce of the farms — barley, hay, a
great deal of flour and some merchandise, which does not come by that
road at alj.

Mr. TOZER — And a great deal comes by the Henness Pass route, does
there not ?

Mr. STANFORD — A very great deal, and a great deal also from farms
along on the road.

Mr. TOZER — Could not most of the amount proposed to be guar-
anteed be saved to the State in the way of fuel ?

Mr. STANFORD — I should say it could. You have got in your Ter-
ritory boundless resources ; you have plenty of mines which would pay
reasonably were the cost of working them reduced to a smaller amount ;
but you have not got many mines which will with the present cost of
the reduction of the ores. The consequence will be, without a railroad,
that very soon the production will be confined to the principal mines;
prospecting will die out, and your population will come to consist only
of those who are engaged in working the more valuable mines and
those connected withthem. But when you can transport your freight
and your fuel at reasonable rates; when you can send your ores to the
Truckee, or get your wood brought cheaply to your mines, you can then
support an almost indefinite amount of population.

Mr. PROCTOR — How far has the road progressed already ?

Mr. STANFORD— Only thirty-one miles as yet.

Mr. PROCTOR — Are there any men at work on the road now ?

Mr. STANFORD — Yes, sir; a small gang of men at Auburn, where
we have a heavy cut. We have a few men at work upon that. I feel
myself greatly obliged to the gentlemen of the Convention for the kind
attention they have given me, and I will trespass no further upon their
time.

Mr. CHAPIN — I move a vote of thanks to Governor Stanford for the
aluable information he has given the Convention.

The question was taken and the motion agreed to.

' REPORT

OP THE

CHIEF ENGINEER

OP THE

toamlte and $?m&tm)M f alfejj §J. §L (Eflmpanji.

LIST OF OFFICERS.

President ,..'. CHAS. E. -McLANE.

Yice President OGDEN SQTJIBES.

DIRECTORS.

C. W. BEBWSTEE, S. H. NASH,

JOHN BLAIB, GEOBGE W. SWAN,

E. A. BISHOP, THEO. F. TEACT,

CHAS. E. McLANE, A. A. TAN YOOEHIES,

TBUMAN WILCOX.

Chief Engineer and Superintendent E. A. BISHOP.

Secretary N. A. HAMILTON.

REPORT OF CHIEF ENGINEER,

ON THE SURVEY, COST OF CONSTRUCTION, AND ESTIMATED REVENUE OP
THE PLACERVILLE AND SACRAMENTO VALLEY RAILROAD.

To the President and Directors of the

Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad Company:

Gentlemen — I have the honor to lay before you the following report
relating to the surveys made by me during the past summer on the
division of the Placerville and Sacramento Yalley Kailroad, between
Shingle Springs and Folsom, together with estimates for the whole line
of road.

The design of this survey is not only to improve the original line in
cost of construction, but to locate it near the axis of traffic, so that the
wants of a larger section of country may be supplied, and an increased
revenue to the company be acquired ; and it is believed that the objects
sought have been in a great measure accomplished.

The increase of local business, and saving in the cost of construction,
without any material increase of working expenses, will strengthen the
argument tor the early construction of a work which is at once so neces-
sary for the development of our county, and promises to be so profitable
to stockholders.

This report being supplemental to the one published by the former
engineer of the road, Mr. William J. Lewis, the two have been incor-
porated to some extent.

The topographical features of the country traversed by the line will
be first described. " The city of Placerville occupies both banks of
Placer creek, which flows into Weber creek, one of the tributaries of the
South Fork of the American river. It is almost entirely surrounded by
hills; the ridge between Placer creek and the South Fork stretching
along north of and parallel to the creek, and a high ridge lying to the
south, and known as Coon Hill, forming the divide between the waters
of Placer and Wuber creeks. These ridges unite at the head of the
valley, about two and one half miles above Placerville, and form a ridge
which is a spur from the main ridge dividing the waters of the Ameri-
can and Cosumnes rivers.

"This main ridge projecting from the sierra, south of Slippery Ford,
and having a general direction a little south of west, is traced by the
towns of Diamond Springs, El Dorado, and Buckeye Flat. At Clarks-
ville the crest of the ridge is about two miles north of the town. Pro-

ceeding westerly it curves to the left around the heads of Carson creek,
and is crossed by the stage road from Placerville to Folsom at a low gap
at the head of ISTatoma Valley, north of G-. N. Douglas' house, and by
the Sacramento road near the "White Eock House.

" The ridge dividing the waters of the two rivers, which is here the
divide between Carson and Alder creeks, terminates abruptly a short dis-
tance west of the White Rock House, and the line of demarcation
between the American and Cosumnes passes over a tract of nearly level
country, descending to the general level of the Sacramento Valley, and
terminating at the town of Sutterville, three miles below the city of
Sacramento."

The line surveyed by Mr. Lewis follows this ridge from El Dorado to
the summit near the White Eock House, the crest of which is about mid-
way between the Cosumnes and American rivers.

The recent survey crosses the summit near White Eock, making that
place a point common to both lines.

At Shingle Springs, one mile west from Buckeye Flat, a spur diverges,
and runs in a southerly direction for ten miles, until it reaches the Cos-
umnes river. Here its high elevation terminates, and its course changes
to the west.

This spur divides the waters of Deer creek, a stream which rises in
the main ridge between the Clarksville Summit and Shingle Springs, and
Big Canon, (both tributaries of the Cosumnes.) The latter stream enters
the Cosumnes a short distance east of the end of the spur; while Deer
creek, flowing parallel with it until opposite that point, and in a north-
west direction from it, changes its course to the southwest, and gradually
converging connects through sloughs with the Cosumnes at Daylor's
Eanch.

The crest of this divide, though much lower than where it first strikes
the Cosumnes, still maintains a moderate elevation, alternating between
low depressions and higher tables for twelve miles until it ends at Day-
lor's, a low but well defined ridge.

Carson creek rises in the main ridge, west of the Clarksville Summit,
and flows in a general southwesterly direction until it enters Deer
creek, about four miles above Daylor's Eanch.

The drift of the country between the South Fork of the American and
Cosumnes rivers is in direction tranversely to those streams.

The first prominent elevation after leaving the valley and approaching
the Sierras is the range of hills which begin on the South Fork just be-
low Salmon Falls, and running in a direction very nearly south, ends on
the Cosumnes as already described.

This range is broken by Deer and Carson creeks, and the New York
Eavine ; the latter stream flowing into the South Fork of the American.
The change in location from the original line begins near Shingle
Springs, and follows down the ridge until it strikes the valley between
Deer creek and the Cosumnes; then running nearly parallel to the
transverse range of hills, crosses the main ridge and old line to Monte
Cristo at White Eock, and connects with the Folsom branch line again
at the Natoma Canal.

A detailed description of it will be given under its proper head.

PRELIMINARY SURVEYS.

As one of the principal objects of the change of location was for se-
curing the traffic of the Cosumnes Yalley and a portion of Amador

county, it seemed no less desirable to place as much of the line as prac-
ticable upon the route which must ultimately be used for a line of rail-
road communication between San Francisco and Nevada Territory. I
deemed it proper, therefore, after reaching Deer creek bottom, to make
a preliminary examination down Deer creek, from Crocker's Ranch to
Daylor's, a distance of nine miles.

The excessive sinuosity of Deer creek immediately west of Crocker's
will cause three miles of heavy work. With that exception, the expense
of grading will be moderate. The difference of elevation between the
two places was found to be two hundred and sixty nine seventy-seven
one hundredths feet.

A line was also run from Crocker's Eanch, connecting with the Monte
Cristo line near the Prairie House on the Sacramento road. This was
done in order to ascertain the practicability of connecting with the Sac-
ramento Yalley Railroad at Monte Cristo. It is only necessary to
observe that the work can be cheaply constructed, and that the gradi-
ents will be extremely light.

In compliance with instructions received from your Board, August
fifth, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, I immediately com-
menced a preliminary survey at Folsom for the purpose of finding a
more direct line between that town and Placerville, by running along
the South Fork of the American river, or its immediate vicinity.

Repeated efforts were made to find a suitable location, but all failed.
After occupying eleven and one half days, I became satified of the im-
practicability of that route within the limits of even heavy expense.

Any mention of the pi'eliminary survey of the adopted line will be
unnecessary, as the location follows upon it very closely.

LOCATION OP THE ROAD.

"A bench mark was established and marked O on a pine tree on the
side hill south of Placer creek, and seven hundred feet west of the west-
ern boundary of the city of Placerville, for the initial point of the
survey. The altitude of this bench above high tide at the city of Sacra-
mento is one thousand eight hundred and fifty feet.

"The road is carried on a level for .71 of a mile, following the val-
ley of Placer creek and crossing several deep ravines and short spurs.
It then descends at the rate of 1.5 per one hundred feet (79.2 per mile),
and crossing a depression in the dividing ridge enters the valley of
Weber creek. At the summit the grade is 65.6 feet below the natural
1 surface, and a cutting for eight hundred and fifty feet will be required.
| The line 'then crosses Mr. Krahnor's inclosure, one hundred and fifty
j yards to the left of his house, and follows the side hill sloping to Weber
creek for about one mile, when it crosses the creek by a bridge four
j hundred and fifty feet in length (consisting of three spans of one hun-
I dred and fifty feet) and at an elevation of one hundred and thirty-eight
j feet above the channel of the stream. The line then rises at the rate of
! one foot in one hundred (52.8 feet per mile) for .36 of a mile, and cross-
i ing a narrow spur enters the valley of Gold Flat, passing a little south
] of Mr. Ayres' house ; crossing the ridge between Cold Flat and Indian
i Ravine near the reservoir by a cut 29.4 feet in depth and one thousand
. seven hundred feet in length.

" Following down Indian Ravine a short distance, and descending, it
j then crosses the dividing ridge by a cut twenty-eight feet in depth and
j one thousand feet in length, and enters Empire Ravine at its head. The

line then passes down the left bank of the ravine, running a little south
of the reservoir of the South Fork Canal Company, and crossing the
Placerville and Folsom road about one fourth of a mile west of the town
of El Dorado. It then crosses Slate creek, passing about one hundred
yards south of the Kingsville House, and gains the dividing ridge be-
tween the waters of the Cosumnes and American rivers at the Mountain
House. The depression at the Mountain House is passed by an embank-
ment five hundred feet in length, the greatest altitude being thirty-five
feet.

" The line then bears to the left of the stage road, and passing around
the head of the ravine at Dr. Edwards', crosses the road at the summit
of the ridge between Dr. Edward's and Buckeye Flat. From the cross-
ing of Slate creek to the eastern base of this ridge, nine thousand one
hundred feet, the grades are very light, the whole descent being only
23.2 feet in one and three quarter miles. But we are now obliged to
adopt a grade of 1.5 per one hundred feet (79.2 per mile) to descend to
Buckeye Flat. The grade of the road is 89.8 feet below the summit of
this ridge; and a tunnel seven hundred feet in length, with cuttings at
the two ends for one thousand seven hundred feet, will be required.

" Buckeye Flat is designed to be crossed at the summit between the
waters of the Cosumnes and American rivers, a little south of the flume
of the Eureka Canal, by an embankment two thousand two hundred feet
in length, average hight 40.6 feet."

Leaving Buckeye Flat, the line crosses the stage road at the Planters'
House (Shingle Springs), on the summit of the dividing ridge. It then
deflects to the south, and gains the crest of the spur which divides the
waters between Deer creek and Big Canon at Station five hundred and
six, which is four hundred feet west of the road leading to the Cosumnes
Valley.

Here we leave Mr. Lewis' line, and continue the new location south-
wardly along the west slope of the spur, descending with gradients
varying from level to 1.84 feet per one hundred for a distance of 3.57
miles, until it reaches the summit of the divide west of the Spring Gar-
den store, in Hunter's Banch. The ground for a portion of this distance
is very favorable, but a deep ravine running into Deer creek must be :
crossed by an embankment eight hundred feet in length, with an average
hight of 40.6 feet. There is also a narrow spur to cross which will
require a cutting of four hundred feet in length — greatest depth, 26.6
feet.

The line now passes down on the east side of the ridge, crossing the
Cosumnes Valley road a short distance north of Dugan's Hotel; enters
the field east of the hotel, and runs along a bench of smooth ground with
light gradients for .8 of a mile, until it reaches a point opposite and
west of Hitchcock's house.

From this point the grade rises one foot per one hundred (52.8 feet per
mile) for three thousand three hundred feet, until it reaches Hitchcock's
Summit, north of the Sugar Loaf. This summit is not a divide in the
main ridge, but the crest of a spur which projects from it to the east and
south, dividing the waters of Indian and Clark's creeks ; the waters of
the former flowing into Big Canon, and those of the latter into the Cos-
umnes, between the mouth of Big Canon and the high end of the main
ridge previously mentioned.

From Hitchcock's Summit the line deflects to the west, and descends
with a uniform grade of 1.84 feet per one hundred, to the School House
summit in the main ridge. It crosses this divide into Atkinson's Banch,

at the head of Hog Gulch, with a cutting one thousand four hundred
feet in length, the greatest depth being 16.24 feet. From this summit it
deflects to the southwest, and is traced along the west slope of the ridge
until it gains the summit of the divide at Miller's Corral, a distance of
3.28 miles. Before reaching Miller's Corral, a rocky spur which projects
to the northwest must bo crossed, which will require a cutting one
thousand five hundred feet in length, and having an average depth of
25.6 feet.

Several attempts were made to avoid this heavy piece of work, but
the peculiar formation of the country will prevent any cheaper align-
ment on the west side of the ridge, unless curves of very short radii are
admitted.

A preliminary line was run from Hitchcock's around the east side of
Sugar Loaf and the main ridge to Miller's Corral. This would give suf-
ficient distance to reduce the gradients to less than eighty feet per mile,
but the work will be much heavier, and greater curvature will be re-
quired. It would be well, however, to make a thorough location of this
section before the other line is absolutely adopted.

To the summit of the transverse ridge we,st of Marshall's store, which
ends the high elevation, the line runs from the corral along the east slope
of the ridge in a direction nearly south, crossing a deep and narrow
gulch before it gains the summit. The distance is two thousand nine
hundred feet, and the grade rises .15 per one hundred feet, (7.9 feet per
mile.) It is designed to cross the gulch with a trestle bridge four hun-
dred feet in length, the extreme hight being 40.9 feet.

The line now curves to the northwest. Crossing the Cosumnes Yal-
ley road, it descends along the west slope of the ridge with a uniform
grade of 1.80 per one hundred feet (ninety-five feet per mile), until it
reaches the head of Morrill's Creek, which it crosses to a low, smooth
spur which runs parallel with the main ridge. The line continues along
the east side of the spur until it reaches a point 3.14 miles from the top
of the ridge. The grade at this point changes to 1.15 feet per one hun-
dred (60.7 per mile,) for one thousand two hundred feet when it changes
to 1.80 feet per one hundred, and continues for twelve hundred feet
further to its crossing of Morrill's Creek at the point of the spur. It
now passes over a smooth bench of land lying at the northwest base of
a section of the high ridge, entering the Deer Creek bottom with light
gradients.

Doubtless, a better alignment could have been obtained from the head
of Morrill's Creek to this point, by continuing along the main ridge
But the base of the ridge for the greater distance is badly broken by
small ravines, the crossing of which would be expensive ; besides, lai'ger
quantities of rock would be encountered. These considerations decided
the choice of location.

Deer Creek will be crossed by a bridge one hundred and fifty feet
long, (containing two spans of seventy-five feet each) fifteen feet above
the bed of the creek.

Keeping the same general direction, the line ascends to the summit of
the divide, between Carson and Deer Creeks 1.22 miles, with light gra-
dients. It then descends to Carson Creek, crossing that stream by a
bridge one hundred and fifty feet in length (two spans, seventy-five feet
each), at an altitude of ten feet above its channel. The line again as-
cends to reach the summit of the divide between Carson and Alder
creeks, near the White Rock House, a distance of 2.78 miles. An exam-
ination of the map and profile will show this summit to be west of White
15a

.Rock, its true position. This is caused by carrying the line of the sum-
mit of the divide across a short spur which juts out of the White Rock
ridge. A saving of grade can be obtained at the expense of alignment,
and heavier work, by locating the line around the projecting spur, to-
gether with the additional expense of changing portions of the Eureka
Canal, which would be the way of the road. A closer examination of
this locality may waiTant a change of the line.

From White Rock the line descends along the benches which skirt the
ridge, until it connects with the original line on the summit which
divides the waters of Alder and Willow creeks, and crossed by the JSTa-
toma Canal. From the summit west of Marshall's store to the
Natoma Canal, the general direction of the line is unchanged.
The grades between the canal and the divide between Carson and
Deer creeks are moderate, with the exception of four thousand three
hundred feet of descending grade at 1.50 per one hundred. The line
from the Natoma Canal to Willow Creek is nearly coincident with the
public road. It then descends Willow Creek along its right bank until
it debouches into the valley of the American River, near the Lexington
House, on the Sacramento and Coloma stage road.

From this point it can unite with the Sacramento Yalley Railroad in
the town of Folsom, or its immediate vicinity, within a distance of our
thousand five hundred feet; the difference of elevation being but ten
feet. Several lines were run from this point, connecting with the Sac-
ramento Valley Railroad. It would, however, be impolitic to denote
the particular location until the land damages are more satisfactorily
adjusted. *

The length of the line from Station five hundred and six to the Sac-
ramento Yalley Railroad is 22.95 miles, and the whole distance from
Placervile to Folsom is 34.86 miles.

The grades descend from the Natoma Canal to the Lexington House
at rates varying from level to eighty feet, and from that place to tho
Sacramento Valley Railroad they will depend upon the final location of
the line.

The following table exhibits the several grades on the surveyed line,
beginning at Placerville and terminating at Folsom :

TABLE OF GRADES

ON THE PLACERVILLE AND SACRAMENTO VALLEY RAILROAD.

No. of

Length of
Grade in

Grade per
100 feet.

Rise of
Grade in

Fall of
Grade in

Elevation
above High

Length of
Grade in

Grade per
Mile in

Grade.

Feet.

Tide in Feet.

Miles.

Feet.

3,727

1850.00

.71

Level.

7,417

1.50

110.50

1739.50

1.40

79.20

753

1739.50

.14

Level.

1,900

1.00

19.00

1758.50

.36

52.80

2,000

1758.50

.38

Level.

15,700

1.50

235.50

3523.00

2.97

79.20

1,600

1523.00

.30

Level.

1,700

0.50

8.50

1514.50

.32

26.40

2,224

1514.50

.42

Level.

3,900

•0.50

19.50

1495.00

.75

26.40

6,300

1.50

94.50

1400.50

1.19

79.20

1,900

1400.50

.36

Level.

5,900

0.50

29.50

1430.00

1.12

26.40

500

1430.00

.09

Level.

2,200

1.50

33.00

1397.00

.41

79.20

4,582

1.55

71.02

1322.18

.87

81.80

2,000

1.00

20.00

1302.18

.38

52.80

1,600

.20

3.20

1298.98

.30

10.50

5,668

1.85

104.86

1194.12

1.07

97.60

900

1194.12

.17

Level.

j 21

6,100

1.70

103.70

1090.42

1.16

89.70

1,250

.60

7.48

1082.94

.24

31.60

1,470

1082.94

.28

Level.

1,400

.66

9.24

1073.70

.26

34.80

3,300

1.00

33.00

1106.70

.63

52.80

17,340

1.84

319.05

787.65

3.28

97.10

2,900

.15

4.35

792.00

.56

7.90

16,583

1.80

298.50

493.50

3.14

95.00

1,200

1.15

13.80

479.70

.23

60.70

1,200

1.80

21.60

458.10

.23

95.00

1,573

458.10

.29

Level.

900

1.12

10.08

448.00

.17

59.10

2,200

1.00

22.00

426.00

.42

52.80

300

426.00

.05

Level.

2,000

.50

10.00

436.00

.38

26.40

500

.26

1.30

434.70

.09

13.70

600

434.70

.11

Level.

1,600

.90

14.40

449.10

.30

47.50

1,500

1.30

19.50

468.60

.29

68.60

900

.60

5 40

463.20

.17

31.60

1,400

.20

2,80

466.00

.28

10.50

1,000

1.30

13.00

453.00

.19

68.60

1 1,000

1.50

15.00

438.00

.19

79.20

Table of Grades — Continued.

No. of
Grade.

Length of
Grade in

Feet.

Grade per
100 feet.

Eise of
Grade in

Feet.

Fall of
Grade in

Feet.

Elevation
above High
Tide in Feet.

Length of Grade per
Grade in Mile in

Miles. Feet.

800

538.00

.17

Level.

1,700

1.10

18.80

456.80

.32

58.00

1,100

1.00

11.00

445.80

.21

52.80

2,300

1.20

27.60

473.40

.43

63.30

700

473.40

.13

Level.

3,400

.20

6.80

480.29

.64

10.50

1.100

.70

7.70

487.70

.21

36.90

1,600

.53

8.48

479.42

.30

27.90

3,340

1.50

50.10

429.32

.63

79.20

1,100

429.32

.21

Level.

4.200

1.36

57.12

472.20

.80

71.80

3,500

.26

9.10

363.10 .

.66

13.70

2,600

1.50

39.00

324.10

.49

79 20

800

32410

.15

Level.

1,900

1.00

19.00

305.10

.36

52.80

5,100

1.50

76.50

228.60

.96

79.20

700

228.60

.13

Level.

2,900

1.50

43.50

185.10

.56

79.20

4,500

.11

5.10

180.00

.85

5.90

Total length of Grade in miles , 34.86

Total length of Grade in feet 184.027

SUMMARY.

Lev'l
3.96

.26

68.60

.48

5.90

.85

]6.90
.21

71.80
.80

7.90
.5

47.50
.30

79.20
8.80

10.50
1.2v

52.80
2.49

13.70

.75

8.00
.32

26.40
2.57

27.90
.30

31.60
.41

59.10
.17

80.70
.23

63 30

.43

81.80
.87

89.70
1.16

95.
3.37

97.10
3.28

97.60
1.07

The following table exhibits the length of straight Tines and curves on
the route from Placerville to Folsom :

Straight

line

Miles.

Kadius
11459 ft.

Miles.

Eadius

5730 feet

Miles.

Eadius

2865 feel
Miles.

Eadius

1910 feet

Miles.

Eadius
1677 feet

Miles.

Eadius
1657 feet

Miles.

Eadius
1432feet

Miles.

17.98

.10

.51

4.77

1.60

.20

.07

2.98

Eadius

1348 feet

Miles.

Eadius

1146 feet

Miles.

Eadius
1042 feet

Miles.

Eadius
1011 feet

Miles.

Eadius

969 feet

Miles.

Eadius

955 feet

Miles.

Eadius

819 feet

Miles.

Eadius
717 feet

Miles.

.04

.34

.19

.29

.05

5.27

.07

.04

OBSERVATIONS ON GRADES.

In comparing the two lines between Shingle Springs and Folsom, it
will be observed that the one first surveyed crosses Carson and Deer
creeks, with several of their tributaries, near their sources, therefore
necessarily passing over a section of broken country which would re-
quire a large number of temporary structures in order to complete the
road within reasonable time.

The adopted line crosses both of these streams at a lower elevation,
with short and cheap bridges, and until the ridge south of Deer Creek
is encountered, passes over a smooth country with undulating, but not
unfavorable grades.

The difference of elevation between Placerville and Folsom is one
thousand six hundred and seventy feet. This rise, equally distributed,
would give a grade of 47.9 feet to the mile. A grade even approaching
uniformity is impossible. It becomes necessary, then, to introduce
heavier grades, at intervals, to attain some of the higher elevations. A
maximum of 97.6 feet has been resorted to on this line; but with the
means used by which it is proposed to construct the heavier work, the
maximum grade can be reduced to ninety-five feet.

It is of course desirable for economy in operating a road, to have
the gradients as light as possible; but with the proper adaptation of
machinery, the C03t of motive power on heavy grades can be greatly
reduced.

The following extracts will show the enormous amount of business
which has been transacted on roads with grades far greater than will be
required on this work.

Colonel Ellet, who designed and directed the construction of the Vir-
ginia Central Eailroad over the Alleghany Mountains, reported the fol-
lowing concerning the character of a portion of that road, and the per-
formance of the engines employed:

" The eastern slope is twelve thousand five hundred feet long, and
rises six hundred and ten feet; the average grade- being 257.4 feet, and

the maximum 295.68 feet per mile. The least radius of curvature, two
hundred and thirty-four feet; upon which curve the grade is 237.6 feet
per mile.

"The western slope is ten thousand six hundred and fifty feet long,
and falls four hundred and fifty feet; the average grade being 223.1, and
the maximum 279.84 feet per mile.

" The engines have taken loads varying from twenty-five to fifty tons
up one slope at seven and one half miles per hour, and down the oppo-
site one at six miles per hour, making four trips, of eight miles per day,
for three years.

" The weight of these engines, with wood and water, are twenty-seven
and one half tons.

" On the Pennsylvania Central Eoad are gradients of ninety-five feet
per mile, for nine and three quarters miles; where curves occur the
grade is reduced at the rate of .025 per one hundred feet per degree of
curvature. Passenger trains ascend this grade with a velocity of twen-
ty-four miles per hour, and descend at twenty miles per hour. The
ascent, when there are more than three cars, is effected by the aid of an
additional engine. The working load of the heavy freight engines
(weighing sixty-five thousand pounds, on eight drivers) on the ninety-
five feet gradients, is one hundred and twenty-five tons net, or about two
hundred and eight tons, including tenders and cars.

" On the Massachusetts Western Road are grades of eighty-three feet
for one and one half miles. Engines of twenty tons draw one hundred
tons over this grade. Passenger trains run up at about eighteen miles
per hour, without auxiliary power. Over the fifty-three feet grades on
the Pennsylvania Central Eoad, the general load of the engines (fifty-
five thousand pounds, on six drivers) is one hundred and fifty tons net,
or about two hundred and fifty tons, including tender and cars."

Pacific E. E. Eeport, Yol. 1, p. 115.

"On the Pennsylvania Central Eoad there was transported in the year
one thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight, two hundred and twenty-one
thousand two hundred and eight tons of through freight between Phila-
delphia and Pittsburg, and three hundred and sixty-five thousand and
fifty-seven tons of local freight."

Extracts from a report of Allen Campbell, Esq., formerly Chief Engi-
neer of the Valparaiso and Santiago Eailroad, Chile, will prove particu-
larly interesting :

" The grades on the Santiago Eailroad, though heavy, are, in compari-
son with others which have been cited, not unfavorable ; and we find on
analyzing the expense of operating a railroad, that the cost of motive
power is only a fractional part of the whole."

" A branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Eailroad has gradients of one
hundred and thirty-five feet per mile, which are worked entirely by
locomotive engines. The descent is made with heavy loads with perfect
safety; and a single engine takes up regularly a gross load of sixty-six
tons, exclusive of the engine and tender. On one road in the State of
New York a short gradient of one hundred and seventy-five feet per
mile is descended daily with passenger trains."
*******

"The most interesting and analogous case, however, to which I can
refer, is that of the Baltimore and Ohio Eailroad, one of the great lines

in the United States, alluded to in a previous part of this article, as con-
necting the seaboard with the valley of the Mississippi, across the
Alleghany Mountains.

" In the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty, four hundred and
forty-seven thousand, tons of merchandise and one hundred and eighty
thousand passengers were transported on this road, the receipts amount-
ing to one million three hundred and forty-three thousand dollars, the
road being only about half completed. When finished to the Ohio river,
the receipts are expected to amount to three million dollars.

"On this road are heavy gradients, with several curves of six hundred
feet radius, and some of four hundred feet. It is to the mountain district
of the road just opened that I wish particularly to invite attention, and
for this purpose an extract is made from the official report of the Chief
Engineer, Mr. Latrobe, one of the most distinguished engineers of North
America, in which he describes the route and grades over the Alleghany
Mountains :

"'At about a mile below this point the high grade of one hundred and
sixteen feet per mile begins, and continues about eleven and one half
miles, crossing the Potomac from Virginia into Maryland near the begin-
ning of the grade, and thence ascending the steep side slopes of Savage
river, and Crab Tree creek, to the summit at the head of the latter, a
total distance of about fifteen miles, upon the last three and one half of
which the grade is reduced to about one hundred feet per mile. From
the summit the line passes for about nineteen miles through the level
and beautiful tract of country so well known as the Glades, and near
their western border the route crosses the Maryland boundary at a point
about sixty miles from Cumberland, and passes into the State of Vir-
ginia, in whose territory it continues thence to the terminus on the
Ohio.

" 'From the Glades, the line descends by a grade of one hundred and
sixteen feet per mile for eight and one half miles, and over very rugged
ground, and thence three miles further to Cheat river, which it crosses
at the mouth of Salt Lick creek. The route, immediately after crossing
the river, ascends along the broken slopes of the Laurel Hill, by a grade
of one hundred and five feet per mile for five miles, to the next summit,
passing the dividing ridge by a tunnel of four thousand one hundred feet
in length, and whence, after three miles of light grade, a descent by the
grade of one hundred and five feet per mile tor five miles is made to the
valley of Raccoon creek, by which and the valley of Three Forks creek,
the Tygart's Valley river is reached in fourteen miles more, at the turnpike
bridge above described, and one hundred and three and one half miles
from Cumberland.'

" The foregoing extract exhibits in a few words the physical obstacles
to be overcome.

" It will be seen that a gradient of one hundred and sixteen feet per
mile, both ascending and descending, is required, in the aggregate
amounting to twenty miles ; and in both directions there are also thir-
teen miles more with gradients exceeding one hundred feet per mile.

" The last report of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company states
that the whole amount of tonnage on the main stem for the year ending
October first, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine, was eight hun-
dred and nine thousand eight hundred and thirty-one tons, of which two
hundred and one thousand five hundred and ninety-seven tons were car-
ried over the whole road.

" The maximum load which the engine can take up the highest grade
determines the weight of the trains passing over the whole length of the
road, unless assistant engines are employed.

" It is a safe calculation that a locomotive of twenty-four tons will
draw, exclusive of itself and tender, one hundred and fifty-five tons over
a grade of ninety-five feet per mile, at the rate of ten miles per hour. A
passenger train, consisting of six cars, sixty passengers each, with bag-
gage and express cars, will weigh about one hundred and twenty-five
tons. A locomotive of the same class will pass over the grade with this
load without difficulty. '

" It is not supposed that this number of passengers will often require
conveyance at one time."

ESTIMATES.

In estimating for the cost of this road, a new agent has been intro
duced into the calculations, which is most respectfully submitted to your
consideration.

This agent is "Water !

To persons familiar with the gigantic hydraulic mining operations of
California, this source of power for the rapid and economical removal of
earth, loose rock, small boulders, and some of the softer conglomerates,
will at once commend itself.

The advantages which this work will derive from the use of water
for making the heavy cuttings and embankments can scarcely be over-
estimated.

Fortunately, the South Fork and Eureka canals are located above the
line of railroad, and high enough to command it for almost the entire
distance between Placerville and the foot hills, and the Eureka and the
Natoma canals for a portion of the intervening distance to Folsom,
though the water cannot be so advantageously employed as in the coun-
try east of Deer creek.

Fall, ranging from fifty to three hundred feet, can be had as far as
Deer creek, at all important places on the line, except for three fourths
of a mile west of the Planters' House, where the road is located above
the canal. Wherever sufficient head cannot be obtained, or the quantity
of work will not warrant the erection of hydraulic apparatus, " ground
sluicing" can be adopted ; though producing results far inferior to the
other method, it can be very profitably employed.

The extreme simplicity of the proposed method of working is such
that a brief description will illustrate it. The principle of "hydraulic-
ing," is simply the force of gravity. A tube from six to twelve inches
in diameter, having sufficient strength to resist the pressure, is extended
from the working point upward, and is attached to the flume which con-
veys the water from the canal. At the lower end of the tube is attached
a flexible hose, with a funnel-shaped pipe similar to that of a fire engine.
This pipe concentrates the water, and directs it in a solid stream against
any object in any required direction. The percussion of the water, to-
gether with its softening qualities, rapidly penetrates common earth,
removing it in large quantities. The material broken down is carried
away in sluices by the water which has already passed through the
pipe. Several pipes can be used in one cutting, providing the quantity
of water is sufficient. The material after leaving the cutting can be
placed in embankment by extending the sluice boxes to such points as
may be necessary. In order to separate and retain the earth, a layer of

stone or brush must be placed on the outer slope of the embankment'
As the material will distribute in thin layers, a slight impediment will
obstruct the dirt and at the same time allow the water to pass off.

If brush is used, the width of the bank must be increased so that the
road-bed will remain intact after the brush decays.

In ground sluicing the water performs no important part, except to
remove the material. The earth is broken down by the pick or other
implements, assisted somewhat by the water which flows over the face
of the bank. A large amount of earth can be removed by this method.

Water is peculiarly adapted for borrowing or wasting material.

The facility which this method offers for the leveling of hills and fill-
ing up of valleys, will justify the construction of mountain lines of
railroad superior to any yet projected in this State. Almost every im-
portant ridge in the sierra has its slopes traversed by mining canals.

This cheap mode of grading will have the effect to diminish the curv-
ature and give more uniform gradients, thus necessarily reducing the
working expenses and maintenance of way.

It is of course to be understood that in solid rock, or very hard mate-
rial, water would be useless further than for stripping. This fact has
been taken into consideration in making the estimate.

A hydraulic, using one hundred and fifty inches of water, with one
one hundred and forty feet head, working two pipes (diameter of nozzles
two and one quarter inches) and four men, will remove eight hundred"
cubic yards of common earth in one day. This would make (allowing
miner's prices for labor and water) the average for simple waste dirt
four and three quarter cents per yard, after the apparatus was erected.

To obtain which we estimate as follows :

150 inches of water at 20 cents $30 00

Labor of four men, at $2 8 00

$38 00
$38 00

= 4.75 cents.

800

On a work of this magnitude both water and labor could be obtained
much cheaper.

It may be remarked that the present line was located in view of the
usual methods of grading. By a cheaper way of working, improved
grades and alignments can be obtained.

The estimates have been made for a road bed twelve feet in width, on
embankments, and sixteen feet in excavations.

The side slopes of embankment to be one and a half horizontal to one
vertical, and in excavations of earth one to one; indurated clay and con-
glomerates, one half to one; rock, one fourth to one.

Each cut was estimated separately, taking into consideration the char-
acter of the material, and the distance it had to be hauled.

It may be presumed that in moving such large quantities of earth by
water, in a country so thoroughl}7 gold-bearing as that on the line of this
road, that a large quantity of the precious metal might be gathered, suf-
ficient at least to pay a fair proportion of the expenses. The additional
expense of fixtures to save the gold would be trifling. This, however,
forms no part in the estimate.

No changes have been made in the location of the road above Shingle

Springs; but seven pieces of extensive trestle work have been set aside,
and embankment estimated in their places; and the tunnel on the sum-
mit west of Placerville has, been changed to a cutting.

On the first division of the road, between Folsom and Deer Creek, the
estimates are for the usual methods of working.

ESTIMATE OF COST OE GRADUATION, MASONRY AND BRIDGING.

FIRST DIVISION.

Folsom to Millers' Corral — 15.16 Miles.
i

123,655 cubic yards of excavation

65,083 cubic yards embankment borrowed, at 20 cents..

400 feet trestle bridging...

Bridges at Deer and Carson creeks ....

Culverts and drains

Total.

$ 78,173 50
13,016 60

5,000 00
11,000 00

3,000 10

$110,190 00

SECOND DIVISION.

Miller's Corral to Station 506, near Shingle Springs — 8.77 Miles.

192,289 cubic yards of excavation

66,621 cubic yards embankment borrowed, at 20 cents
86,889 cubic yards embankment borrowed, at 7 cents..

Culverts and drains

1 road crossi n g

Grubbing and clearing

Total

1112,465 75

13,324 20

6,082 23

4,000 00

300 00

1,000 00

$137,172 18

THIRD DIVISION.

Station 506 to Placerville— 10 .93 Miles.

306,269 cubic yards of excavation

517,721 cubic yards embankment

700 feet of tunnel, at $50

751 feet trestle bridging ,

Bridge at Weber Creek, including masonry

Culverts and drains

Grubbing and clearing

Total

$120,414 91

77,658 15

35,000 00

5,415 54

42,000 00

3,000 00

1,000 00

$284,488 60

RECAPITULATION.

First division, 15.16 miles.
Second division, 8 77 miles
Third division, 10.93 miles

Total

5110,190 10
137,172 18

284,488 60

$531,850 88

ESTIMATED COST OF ONE MILE OF SUPERSTRUCTURE.

79 tons (2,240 lbs.), iron rails, 50 lbs, to the yard, at 180..
588 wrought iron chairs, 8 lbs. each, 4,704 lbs., at 8 cents

5,282 spikes, J-lb each, 2, 641 lbs., at 6 cents

2,350 cross-ties, 8 feet long, 6x8 inch, at 60 cents

Distributing material and laying track

Total

6,320 00
376 32
158 46

1,410 00
700 00

8,964 78

SUMMARY OF COST OF CONSTRUCTION.

Graduation, masonry and bridging

Superstructure for 35 38-100 miles, including one-half mile
for side tracks, at $8,964 78 per mile

Add for superintendence and engineering, 10 per cent

Total cost of constructing the road

$531,850 88
317,173 91

549,024 79
84,902 49

53,927 28

BUILDING AND FIXTURES.

Freight and passenger depot, at Placerville

One engine house ,

Way and water stations

One turning table

Total

$ 10,000 00
3,000 00
6,000 00
3,000 00

$ 22,000 00

EQUIPMENT.

5 engines (24 tons each), at $10,000

6 passenger cars for 60 passengers, $3,000

4 baggage cars, at $1,000

20 platform cars, at $800 ,

30 covered freight cars, at $1,000

5 gravel cars,
4 hand cars, at

Total....

$ 50,000 00

18,000 00

4,000 00

16,000 00

30,000 00

2,500 00

600 00

$121,100 00

RECAPITULATION.

The whole amount required to build the road and put it in operation, will be .

For construction of road ,

Buildings and fixtures ,

Locomotives and cars ,

Eight of way, fencing, and contingent expenses

Total

933,927 28
22,000 00

121,100 00
50,000 00

L,127,027 28

SOURCES OF REVENUE.

In the incipiency of a project of this kind, particularly in California,
the want of accurate statistical information renders it extremely difficult
to arrive at satisfactory conclusions in estimating for revenue.

The want of such information was greatly felt in preparing the first
report for this road.

Since that time the wonderful trade which has sprung up between this
State and Nevada (predicted by Mr. Lewis), has made all facts concern-
ing it a very interesting problem, so much so that agents have been em-
ployed by different parties to procure the statistics pertaining to it.

In the appendix attached to this report will be found a communication
from James P. Robinson, Superintendent of the Sacramento Valley Rail-
road, together with a table of the passenger and freight movement for
the seven years which that road has been in operation.

It is proper to remark that Mr. Robinson's letter is based on the sup-
position that the company would first construct that portion of the road
which extends from Folsom to a point near Clarksville, a distance of
eight miles. Although the plan of operation has been changed, his let-
ter contains much valuable information in regard to the cost of operat-
ing railroads in California.

I also present an extract from the report of Theodore D. Judah, Chief
Engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad, which gives a statement of the
business going through the Johnson Pass to Nevada Territory, all of
which must necessarily pass over our road.

From the number of sources from which the figures of the following
estimate have been drawn, together with personal observations on the
subject, I feel satisfied that its correctness can scarcely be questioned.

The quantity of freight transported across the mountains to Nevada
Territory the present season, though large, will be insignificant in com-
parison to the wants of that Territory a few years hence. Perhaps it
may safely be estimated to increase fifty per cent, within the next two
years.

Regarding the concentration and creation of business, the remarks of
Mr. Lewis, in his report of one thousand eight hundred and sixty, are
extremely pertinent to the subject :

"Eailroads not only attract travel and freight, but create them. In
consequence of the saving in time and money by railroad transportation,
passengers and freight on the line of the road, and for some distance on
each side, are drawn to it. For the same reasons many persons travel
who would otherwise stay at home, and many branches of manufacture
and production are undertaken which would not have been profitable
without the railroad, in consequence of the expense of transportation to
market. These effects, then, are naturally divided into two' classes,
wThich may be considered separately under the heads of concentration and
creation.

CONCENTRATION.

" This is by far the lesser effect of the two, but as it is the most ob-
vious and most generally acknowledged, it will bo first considered.

"I have calculated the time required by stage to travel to Folsom,
and thence to Sacramento by railroad ; the time to travel by stage to
Placerville, and thence by railroad to Sacramento, and the time saved;
the cost of freight by wagon to Folsom, and thence by railroad to Sac-
ramento, the cost of freight by wagon to Placerville and thence by rail-
road to Sacramento, and the saving in cost per ton. This estimate presents
the least favorable view of the subject, as some of the places are nearer to
other points of the line than to Placerville, but it will be sufficient for
our purpose. Passengers are estimated to travel bjr stage at six miles
per hour, by railroad at twenty miles; freight by wagons at sixty cents
per ton per mile, by railroad at fifteen cents.

To Fol-
som.

Miles.

To Pla-
c'rville
Miles.

By Fol-
som.

hrs. m.

By
Plac'rville

hrs. m.

Time
saved,
his. m.

Fre

ght per ton.

FROM.

via

Folsom.

via

Plac'rville

Saved.

Placerville

28
38
30
45
45
40
33
33
27
27
35
31
36
35

5 46

7 26

6 6

8 36
8 36

7 46
6 36.
6 36
5 36

5 36

6 56
4 56

7 6
6 56

2 30
4 50

4 10
6 30
6 10

5 50

3 20
5 50
3 20
3 50
3 40
3 00
3 50
5 10

3 16
2 36

1 56

2 6

2 26

1 56

3 16

0 56

2 16

1 46

3 16
1 56
3 16
0 46

119

25
21

30
30
27
22
22
19
19
24
21
24
26

80
80

00
00
00

80
20
20
00
60
60
00

8 7 50
15 90
13 50
21 90
20 70
19 50
10 50
19 50

10 50
9 90

11 70
9 30

12 30
17 10

312 30

9 90

Coloma

7 50

Indian Diggings

Grizzly Flat

8 10

9 30

Kelsey

7 50
12 30

Greenwood Valley...
Cold Springs

3 30

8 70

Gold Hill

9 30

Spanish Flat

12 30

White Eock

12 30

Newtown

12 30

Fair Play

6 90

. 94

"The examples are given to elucidate the manner in which railroads
attract the trade and travel of the adjacent country, and not to prove
that all the business between these towns and Sacramento must at once
he conducted by the railroad. The character of the intervening country
may present exceptional cases, but the general result is undeniable. It
may also be observed that it is not to be presumed that with the present
roads the transportation of freight to Placerville can, in all the cases
enumerated, be conducted at the prices named; but as soon as the rail-
road is built, the people of the neighboring towns will undoubtedly make
good roads connecting with it at the most accessible points.

" The intercourse between that section of country lying east of Placer-
ville and west of the Sierra Nevada, with Sacramento Valley and San '
Francisco, must, under any circumstances, pass through Placerville.
During the last winter the Johnson Pass of the Sierra Nevada, on the
Placerville route, was the only one which was kept open, and conse-
quently all the communication between the western part of California
and Utah Territory passed over that route. There can be no question
that there is an extensive mineral district, stretching along the eastern
hase of the Sierra Nevada, very rich in silver and gold, and, as regards
the former metal, unsurpassed by any country known at the present
time. The larger portion of the provisions, machinery, and tools needed
hy the population must be obtained from California. It will not belong
before there will be a multitude of persons, and a large amount of neces-
sary supplies crossing the sierra to the new El Dorado, which will be
distributed on the Placerville, Big Tree, Jackson, Truckee, and Henness
Pass routes. If a railroad is constructed, all this travel and freight must
pass over it.

" The present population of the "Washoe district is variously estimated
at from eight thousand to ten thousand souls, and taking into considera-
tion the prospective population, twenty thousand passengers annually
may be safely counted upon from this section. I presume I am also safe
in assuming that the larger portion of the overland emigration will strike
for Placerville, and that your city will be regarded as the termination
of their long pilgrimage. The emigration may be set down at an aver-
age of thirty thousand annually ; but how many may choose to make
their homes in El Dorado County, and how many may seek for resi-
dences further west, cannot be determined. Jt is enough for our present
purpose that either choice adds to the profits of the road.

" We will now devote a few words to the second, and most important
branch of the discussion — the creation of business by the construction of
railroads.

CREATION.

" The following statement, derived from the report of Baron Charles
Dupin, on the Paris and Orleans Bailway, exhibits the increase of trade
in some parts of Europe, brought about by the construction of railroads.

" Comparison of the number of travelers conveyed daily throughout
the whole or a portion of the line i

Name of Eailroad.

No. of Passen-
gers before open-
ing of Eailroad.

No. of Passen-
gers after open'g
of Railroad.

Increase pr cent.

Manchester and Liverpool

Stockton and Darlington

New Castle and Carlisle

400
130

200

1,620
630
500
200

3,000

307^

385
445

900
1,400

" The following statement of four railroads in Massachusetts shows
the estimated number carried annually before these roads were built, and
the number transported upon them during the year one thousand eight
hundred and forty-eight :

Name of Railroad.

No. of Passen-
gers before open-
ing of Railroad.

No. of Passen-
gers in the
year 1818.

Increase pr cent.

Boston and Worcester.....

23,500

37,400

71,790

121,700

807,143

527,764

745,825

1,021,169

3 334

Boston and Lowell

1,311

938 ■

Eastern

739

" The aggregate number of passengers conveyed on the seven rail-
roads which diverge from Boston amounts to twenty-five times the
population of the city, and the total travel on the railroads in Massachu-
setts to ten times the entire population of the State. I have before me
the annual report of the Pennsylvania Bailroad Company for the year
one thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight. I was engaged in the loca-
tion and construction of the eastern division of that road from one
thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight to one thousand eight hun-
dred and thirty-two, and at that time a daily stage between Philadelphia
and Pittsburg, with seats for ten passengers, and a tri-weekly stage, with
seats for six, between Philadelphia and Downington (a distance of thirty
miles), were the only public conveyances.

" The following extract from the report of the President of the Com-
] pany, Mr. J. Edgar Thompson, gives a concise exhibit of the business
j done on the road in one thousand eight hundred and fitty-eight :

"'Our trains have been run with great regularity, and remarkable
freedom from accident. We have carried, during the year one million
I twelve thousand eight hundred and three first class, and sixteen thou-
i sand eight hundred and sixty-two emigrant passengers, without the loss
of a single life ; but one accident having occurred to our trains from
i which injury resulted to passengers. In this case three persons were
' slightly injured, whose claims for damages were promptly adjusted for
; the sum of one thousand two hundred and seventeen dollars. In mov-
; ing one million one hundred and thirty-seven thousand one hundred and
! eighty -nine tons of freight, during the year, the total claims incurred for

goods lost, damaged, or delayed, has been but eight thousand and fifty
four dollars.'

" Many of the passengers travel but short distances, and the larger
portion of income of almost every railroad is derived from local travel
and freight.

" As relates to the Pennsylvania .Railroad, this will be exhibited by
another extract from the report already referred to :

" 'It will be seen from the report of the proper department, in relation
to the traffic on the Pennsylvania Railroad daring the past year, that
the equivalent number of through passengers were as follows : On the
Philadelphia division (Philadelphia to Columbia), one hundred and sixty-
nine thousand three hundred and seventy-nine; on the Harrisburg and
Lancaster Railroad, one hundred and nine thousand four hundred and
eighty-one; on the Columbia branch, twenty-seven thousand seven hun-
dred and forty-nine ; and upon the Pennsylvania Railroad (between
Harrisburg and Pittsburg, one hundred and nineteen thousand three
hundred and fifty-eight. In addition to the foregoing were sixteen
thousand two hundred and sixteen emigrant passengers transported
from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. The total number of persons who
passed upon the road during the year was one million twelve thousand
eight hundred and three first class passengers, and sixteen thousand
eight hundred and sixty-two emigrants.'

" On the Sacramento Yalley Railroad, during the month of April, one
thousand eight hundred and sixty, six thousand four hundred and fifty-
six persons traveled over the road, of whom two thousand four hundred
and twenty-six held stage tickets. Of the stage tickets, one thousand
two hundred and ninety-four belonged to the Placerville and Folsom
line.

" It thus appears that nearly two thirds of all the travel is derived
from Folsom and other points contiguous to the road, and but a little
more than one third from connecting stage lines. It will also be seen
that the Placerville stages carried more passengers than all the other
lines together.

" In a statement just published by J. P. Robinson, Esq., Superinten-
dent of the Sacramento Yalley Railroad, he says :

" ' By its facilitjr it has, since Januar}7 first, one thousand eight -hun-
dred and fifty-six, caused a movement of three hundred and sixty-six
thousand people over it. Of this number two hundred and forty thou-
sand persons have been a local movement between Sacramento and Fol-
som, and the remainder, or one hundred and twenty-six thousand
persons, have been a movement arriving or departing on stages to and
from points beyond this road ; showing a large expenditure in this city
and county, which, without this road, would not have been made, which
cannot be estimated at less than one dollar a person, or two hundred and
forty thousand dollars.'

". We may observe that the town of Folsom, which owes its existence
solely to the railroad, contributes largely to its support."

An English writer graphically illustrates the beneficent influence of
railroads upon both States and individuals :

"Railways have, when properly selected, been invariably attended
with the following results : increased government revenue ; increased
value of all property; increased cultivation and produce, and extension
of manufactures; increased accommodation to all classes for intercom-
munication ; diminished cost of all descriptions of goods to consumers,
and increased consumption by accession of numbers; a measure of uni-
versal benefit, without a drawback or objection, if selected and carried
out, under due provisions, with judgment and discretion."
An able correspondent of the Westminster Review, says:
" Wherever railways are constructed — whether they cross the Ameri-
can Continent, and link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, or line the banks
of the Thames, the Ehine, the Danube and the Euphrates ; traverse the
burning plains of Hindostan, or the snows of Siberia — the maxim enun-
ciated by Mr. Pease, of Darlington, when railways were only experi-
ments, on the success of which he had risked his fortune, will equally
hold good, and remain unquestionable evidence of his largeness of view
and soundness of judgment: 'Let the country but make the railroads,
and the railroads will make the country. "

ESTIMATE OF ANNUAL REVENUE.

40,000 through passengers, at $3 00 ,

20,000 passengers from Amador County, $1 50

20,000 passengers; other local travel; distance 10 miles,

'54,750 tons of through freight, $5 00

6,000,000 feet of lumber, $5 00

3,000 tons Amador County freight, $2 25

13,500 tons freight from Cosumnes Valley, $3 00

5,000 cords of wood, $1 00

Mails and Express

Total

$120,000 00

30,000 00

20,000 00

273,750 00

30,000 00

6,750 00

40,500 00

5,000 00

7,500 00

$533,500 00

Note.— The rates allowed by law are : for passengers, ten cents each, per mile ; and for
freight, fifteen cents per ton per mile.

CURRENT EXPENSES.

Motive power

Repairs of freight, baggage and passenger cars

Salaries, wages, and incidental expenses chargeable to pas-
senger department

Do. do. to freight department

To repairs of road, and reserve fund for renewing super-
structure

Salaries of officers, and law expenses

Total current expenses.
Balance net revenue

Or, 22 7.10 per cent, on $1,500,000, the capital stock of the
Company.

16a ■— ■= —

$70,000 00
18,000 00

10,000 00
30,000 00

35,000 00
30,000 00

$193,000 00

$340,500 00

98 -

The construction of the first division of this road, extending from Fol-
som to Miller's Corral, will secure not only the traffic to Placerville, Ne-
vada Territory, and intermediate points, but a large business from
Amador County, at a comparatively trifling expenditure.

From the statistics of freight and travel taken by your agent at El
Dorado last summer, it is discovered that, of the large amount of freight
which passed through that town from Sacramento, only fifty-four per
cent, of it came over the Sacramento Valley Railroad. The remainder
was hauled directly from Sacramento.

It would appear, from this tact, that teams can compete to some ex-
tent with a short line of railroad in a level country, particularly in the
summer, when the roads are good.

But, with a line of railroad from Folsom to Miller's Corral, nearly one
half of the elevation between Placerville and tide water is overcome.
The sharp summits on the wagon road of Carson and Deer creeks are
passed, and the freight is landed within eighteen miles of Placerville.
The wagon road between Miller's Corral and the latter place is far supe-
rior to that west of Deer Creek ; the grades are more uniform, with a
more solid road bed.

A separate estimate for this division has been prepared.

By referring to the statement of business for this division, it will be
seen that the earnings each year will be very great, and that a large
sum can be applied to the construction account of the remainder of the
road.

ESTIMATE OF COST OP GRADUATION, MASONRY, AND BRIDGING.

FIRST DIVISION

Folsom to Miller's Corral, 15.16 Miles.

123,655 cubic yards of excavation

65,083 cubic yards embankment borrowed, at twenty cents

400 feet trestle bridging

Bridges at Deer and Carson creeks

Culverts and drains

Superstructure for 15.3 miles, including side tracks, at
$8,964 78 per mile ,

Add for superintendence and engineering, ten per cent

Total cost of constructing First Division

$78,173 50
13,016 60

5,000 00
11,000 00

3,000 00

$110,190 10
137,161 13

247,351 23
24,735 13

$272;086 36

BUILDINGS AND FIXTURES.

Buildings

One turning-table

Total

$6,000 00
3,000 00

,000 00

EQUIPMENT.

3 engines, at $10,000

4 passenger cars for sixty passengers, $3,000

2 baggage cars, $1,000

10 platform cars, $800

10 covered cars, $1,000

2 hand cars, $150

Cost of locomotives and cars

$30,000 00

12,000 00

2,000 00

8,000 00

10,000 00

300 00

62,300 00

RECAPITULATION.

Whole amount required to build the First Division, and put it into
operation, will be —

For construction of road

Buildings and fixtures

Locomotives and cars

Eight of way, fencing, and contingent expenses

Total

8272,086 36

9,000 00

62,300 00

20,000 100

$363,386 36

ESTIMATE OE ANNUAL REVENUE ON FIRST DIVISION.

Folsom to Miller's Corral, 15.16 Miles.

40,000 Placerville passengers, at $1 50

20,000 passengers from Amador County, $1 50

5,000 way passengers, at $0 50 ,

54,750 tons Placervile freight, $2 25

3,000 tons Amador County freight, $2 25

2,000 cords of wood, $1 00

Mails and express

Total

$60,000 00

30,000 00

2,500 00

123,187 50
6,750 00
2,000 00
3,750 00

228,187 50

100

CURRENT EXPENSES.

Motive power »

.Repairs of freight, baggage and passenger cars

Salaries, wages and incidental expenses, chargeable to pas

senger department ,

Do. do. freight department , ,

Repairs of road, and Reserved Fund for renewing super

structure

Salaries of officers and law expenses

Total current expenses

Balance net revenue

Or, 36 4.10 per cent, on the cost of this Division.

£30,000 00
7,000 00

4,000 00
12,000 00

13,000 00
30,000 00

$96,000 00

$132,187 50

The importance of railroad communication between the business cen-
ter of this county and nyavigable waters is, I believe, admitted. The
feasibility of this project has been demonstrated by actual survej', and
the cost of construction accurately estimated. Without extravagant es-
timates for revenue, or basing any part of it on sources of doubtful
character, or taking into consideration the full amount of business which
the road might reasonably be expected to create, but very nearly upon
the actual movement of passengers and freight, at less than legal rates,
it has been shown that a large revenue will accrue to the stockholders.
The intrinsic merits of the project, therefore, will naturally guarantee a
rapid disposal of the stock.

There is, however, but little doubt but that the greater part of the
means to forward the work will be supplied by the citizens of this county.
Some assistance will probably be offered by a portion of Nevada Terri-
tory, whose interests are nearly identical with our own.

The development of wealth in Nevada — situated in the interior of the
continent, and separated from commercial centers by the chain of Sierra
Nevada Mountains — has led individual energy to discover practicable
routes connecting that State with the seaboard ; and it may be safely as-
sumed that all practicable lines from the vallej' of the Sacramento to
Nevada have been thoroughly explored. The result has been, that the
Overland Mail, the Pony Express and the Telegraph Line, pass through
Placerville and the Johnson Pass; and not onl}T the stages, but by far
the larger amount of transportation from San Francisco to Nevada, fol-
lows the Placerville route. We are therefore correct jn assuming that'
the Placerville route is the natural route — that which the trade now fol-
lows, and will continue to follow; and it is reasonable to suppose that,
after private interests have been subserved, a question so important to
the entire Union will be decided upon its merits. Then we may at least
expect an impartial examination of a route which has been so long and
favorably known to the public.

Each year demonstrates its superiority; therefore, with a railroad to
Placerville, our citizens need have but little to fear from rival lines pene-
trating the mountains at other places.

101

This road can be built in less time than any other now projected, and,
if completed at once, will concentrate for a great length of time the en-
tire traffic which now crosses the Sierras.

In the month of September, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
two, I had the honor to conduct a survey which was made across the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, from Slippery Ford to Carson City, Nevada;
its object being to ascertain the practicability of the Johnson Pass route
for railroad purposes.

I take the present opportunity to correct a false impression, which bas
been circulated by several journals in this State, concerning the nature
of that survey, and beg leave to say, that the statements made in the re-
port which was published were deduced from a thorough preliminary
survey made by transit and leveling instruments, with a full corps of as-
sistants.

The successful crossing of the Sierra with a railroad being of para-
mount importance to California, some remarks on the subject in this
connection may not be inappropriate.

Believing that the greatest difficulty to be encountered is the snow, a
few reasons are offered why a tunnel was recommended in a former re-
port.

The Johnson Pass differs from most of the passes in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, in having no broad elevated plateau. Some of the sources of
the Truckee River on the east side, and of the South Fork of the Ameri-
can River on the west, leave the main summit at the Johnson Pass and
vicinity so abruptly, that the main divide is verj7 narrow. Consequently,
the deep snow belt is on tho crest of the divide, when, but a short dis-
tance from it on either side, the snow fall is very light.

It seems, then, that the method which would most naturally suggest
itself for avoiding this obstacle would be to pierce through the crest, at
as low an elevation as possible, with a tunnel; by the construction of
which the deep snow is avoided, constant working of the road is insured
and lighter and more uniform grades secured.

It is readily admitted that a tunnel through this ridge is an undertak-
ing of considerable magnitude; but greater works of the same character
are already in the process of construction; and it must be remembered
that the commercial interests of our whole country are more or less af-
fected by the location of the continental road. It has been recommended
that while the tunnel is being constructed, a system of re-entering in-
clines, or zigzags, be laid through the Johnson Pass, from Slippery Ford
to Tahoe Lake Valley. The formation of the country is well adapted
for such purposes; and, with this expedient, the snow belt is then far
less in length than on any other of the projected lines.

This is but a temporary expedient, in order to put the railroad into
immediate operation. The tunnel through the Sierra Nevada is unde-
niably a work of great expense, and of great consequence; but as it
secures a line not obstructed to a serious extent by snow, we must re-
commend its final adoption as a part of the great railroad across the con-
tinent.

I must return my thanks to my assistants, Mr. Eeed Bigler and Mr.
R. H. Moore; also to Mr. J. P. Eobinson, Superintendent of the Sacra-
mento Valley Railroad, for supplying me with valuable statistical infor-
mation.

To that eminent mathematician and engineer, Mr. William J. Lewis,

102

whose devotion to the railroad interests of California has heen so often
manifested, I am most deeply indebted, and return my most sincere
thanks for the advice and assistance which I have received from him at
various times.

Eespectfully submitted,

Placerville, Januaiy 1, 1863.

FEANCIS A. BISHOP,
Chief Engineer P. & S. Y. E. E.

REPORT

OF THE

CHIEF ENGINEEE

OP THE

SAN FRANCISCO AND WASHOE RAILROAD COMPANY.

OFFICERS.

President.
CHAELES E. McLANE.

Yice President.
OGDEN SQUIRES.

Treasurer.
THEODORE F. TEACY.

Secretary.
K A. HAMILTON.

Chief Engineer.
FEANCIS A. BISHOP.

Directors.
C. E. McLane, G. W. Swan,

F. A. Bishop, Ogden Squires,

T. F. Tracy.

REPORT OF THE CHIEF ENGINEER

OF THE S. F. AND W. EAILEOAD OF CALIFORNIA, CROSSING THE SIERRA
NEVADA MOUNTAINS FROM PLACERVILLE TO THE EASTERN
BOUNDARY OF CALIFORNIA, ON THE LINE OF BUSI-
NESS FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO THE
SILVER MINES OF NEVADA.

To the President and Directors of the

San Francisco and Washoe Railroad Company :

Gentlemen — In offering for you^ consideration the result of the sur-
veys made under my direction the past year I wish to remind you that
the merits of the route surveyed are not now for the first time presented
to the public. As early as one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four
attention was invited to it on the ground that the approach to the Sum-
mit from the California side was on the shortest possible line compatible
with easy grades ; that the altitude of the pass was but little greater
than that of others better known ; that owing to the peculiar conforma-
tion of the ground there was two thirds less of snow line and one third
less of depth of snow than was encountered on any of the routes then
traveled from the central part of California.

The Legislature of California, at the session of one thousand eight
hundred and fifty-four and fifiy-five, passed an Act providing for the
survey and construction of a wagon road across the Sierra Nevada on
the best line that should be discovered on what was known as the Cen-
tral Eoute. The State Surveyor General, S. H. Marlette, Esq., instituted
a system of surveys that embraced eight different passes, and obtained
full reports on four lines, viz : the Calaveras, Henness, Beckwourth, and
Placerville. These reports were submitted to a Board of Commission-
ers, consisting of the Governor, Secretary of State, and Surveyor
General, who unanimously adopted the Placerville Eoute. The survey
of this route was entrusted to the Hon. Sherman Day, an engineer of
acknowledged ability and reputation, and the information collected by
him and embodied in a published report first called attention to the
practicability of the route for railroad purposes.

A communication from William J. Lewis, Esq., C. E., embracing these
facts, was brought before Congress in the session of one thousand eight
hundred and fifty-seven and fifty-eight by the Hon. F. P. Blair, Jr., of
Missouri, (see Congressional Globe, page four hundred and twenty-three;
Appendix, volume thirty-seven.)

The reiterated charges of the enemies of the Pacific Eailroad in Con-

108

gress that a line on the Central Route was impracticable, (a fatal
objection to the great enterprise itself,) were in effect removed by this
communication, and from that time dates the united action of Congress,
capitalists, and scientific men, which has resulted in placing the enter-
prise upon a footing that promises speedy success.

It is unnecessary to dilate upon the circumstances which led the lo-
cation of the Pacific Railroad across the Sierra Nevada upon anoiher
route. It may be sufficient to say, that although enough information
had been collected to establish the fact that the Placerville route was
practicable for a railroad, yet until the year one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-two positive information concerning the character of the
whole route had not been ascertained. During the autumn of that year
I conducted a survey from Strawberry Yalley, California, to Carson City,
Nevada, which established the theory already assumed.

The results invited the attention and unprejudiced examination of
those engaged in the construction of railroads across the sierra, and who
might desire to secure the best location for such purposes.

That a project which depends upon its intrinsic merit for success
should at first fail to attract the public is not strange ; and in a matter
of this kind where so much depends upon its details for making fair
comparisons, it probably was no injustice which kept it in a measure
obscured.

The recent surveys from Placerville to the State line have set at rest
all questions of doubtful information, having been conducted so as to
embrace all of the minor details, and it is confidently assorted that no
other line over the Sierra Nevada has been subjected to such rigid in-
strumental examination.

The opposition to the Placerville route have relied upon the long
tunnel recommended, as the chief argument against its practicability —
probably ignorant that engineering precedents for it are quite common
and are to be found on works of less importance, and also that its con-
struction would relieve the road from a heavy and perpetual expense of
freeing the track from snow. Crossing two summits has also been con-
sidered objectionable, which is undoubtedly true, unless compensating
advantages can be clearly established.

The information gained by the late surveys prove : First, that the tun-
nel line is practicable, and that the deep snow can be entirely avoided by
by it. Second, that a line may be carried directly over the summit, and
by descending into Lake Valley, can connect again with the tunnel line.
Third, that by extending the line through Luther's Pass, in the eastern
range, and down Carson Canon, only one summit will be crossed.

The advantages claimed for a line of railroad on this route over all
others yet reported, and which the information obtained substantiates,
are, cheapness in first cost of construction, lighter gradients, easier
curves, less snow line, and less depth of snow; its general directness to
Virginia City, and its location in the great channel of trade between
California and Nevada.

In the report of one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two it was de-
signed to cross the South Fork of the American River below Strawberry
Yalley, with the, main lino, and follow up the right bank of the river
into the gorge of the Slippery Ford branch, penetrating the main divide
of the Sierra Nevada with a tunnel three and three fourths miles in
length; then descending into and crossing Lake Valley, reaching its
eastern side in the vicinity of the terminus of the present survey. But
on account of the magnitude of the tunnel, a temporary track, consisting

109

of a series of re-entering inclines over the Johnson summit, was recom-
mended.

The altitudes assumed for Strawberry, as well as for Johnson's Pass,
upon which the surveys of one thousand eight hundred and and sixty-
two were based, were taken from Mr. Goddard's barometrical observa-
tions of one thousand eight hundred and fifty-fiveA The examinations of
the past year proved that these altitudes were much too low, necessarily
causing the abandonment of that portion of the projected line along the
north side of the South Fork. But it has been found that a crossing to
the main tunnel can be easily effected above Strawberry; and in place
of the engineering expedient then proposed, for a temporary track, a
direct line over the summit, with a grade ofaeightyto the mile, has
been discovered.

The topography of the country through which this location has been
made, together with that affecting projected lines will be briefly de-
scribed.

The South Fork of the American Eiver rises in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, latitude thirty-eight degrees fifty minutes north, and pursues
a general westerly direction until its waters unite with those of the Sac-
ramento Eiver, at Sacramento. The source of the most easterly branch
of the South Fork, at the head of which the summit line is carried, is a
little south of Johnson's Pass, having an altitude of seven thousand three
hundred and seventy-three feet above the sea. The Slippery Ford
branch of this stream enters it about six miles west of Johnson's Pass, at
Slippery Ford. Taking its head in the sierra about six or eight miles
north westerly from its confluence, it runs nearly parallel with the axis
of the range, and splitting it and running through a deep and narrow
gorge, for part of the distance, it leaves the higher peaks to the west;
while on the east, between it and Lake Bigler, or Tahoe, is the main
divide, much lower and broken.

On the east side, of the divide, four or five miles northerly from Slip-
pery Ford, a stream rises which flows into Fallen Leaf Lake, and from
thence into Lake Tahoe, at its southwestern extremity. This stream,
flowing through a gorge similar to the Slippery Ford branch of the
American, cuts the eastern base of the mountain very deeply, and at
right angles with it, making the main ridge very narrow between the
two streams.

Lake Valley, which lies east of the sources of the South Fork, is in-
closed by a short range of mountains, which runs between it and Carson
Valley. This range diverges from the main chain in the vicinity of the
old Carson Pass, bearing to the east and north until it reaches the
Truckee River. This stream, being the outlet of Lake Tahoe, flows
from the west side, about two thirds of the length of the lake from the
south end, breaks its way through a chain of mountains, in a northwest-
erly and northerly direction, for about fifteen miles, then running north
easterly for about the same distance, it finally changes its course to the
east, and enters the Great Basin.

The general altitude of the range between Carson and Lake valleys
seems to be as high as the main range. Its crest, however, is pierced
by several low gaps, the lowest of which is called the Walton Pass —
having an altitude of seven thousand and fifteen feet.

Southeasterly from Johnson's Pass, about eight miles distant, and east
of the range already described, is Hope Valley.

In this valley, and near the old Carson Pass, the West Fork of Carson
River takes its rise. This stream, after leaving the valley, flows in an

110

easterly direction until it enters Carson YaWey, then, changing to the
north, bisects the valley for its entire length, and, piercing a low moun-
tain range, turns to the east again, and finallj7 sinks in the sands of the
Great Basin.

The East Fork of the Carson takes its rise in the main sierra to the
south of Hope Valley, flows in nearly the same general direction until it
converges and unites with the west branch, opposite Van Sickles' and
the eastern terminus of the Kingsbury Toll Road.

Between these streams is an extensive mining district, familiarly
known as "The Silver Mountain."

The divide between the CosumneS and American rivers, upon which
the line has been located, presents some peculiarities which require no-
tice.

This ridge, extending from the summit of the Sierra to Sutterville, on
the Sacramento River, maintains a very high elevation westward as far
as Iron Mountain. Here a deep depression occurs, in which the Flem-
ing and Ogilby toll roads join; one descending to Pleasant Valley and
the other running eastward into the valley of the south fork. About
one mile further west of the junction, is the Union House. At this
place Weber Creek takes its rise, and flows westwardly for nearly thirty
miles parallel with the south fork, and generally about four miles distant
from that stream, until it intersects it at one of its large bends, eight or
ten miles above Folsom.

Weber Creek, as will be observed, splits the main ridge for some dis-
tance, making a long, narrow spur of the portion between it and the
south fork. This spur attains considerable altitude west of the Union
House; but, in a short distance, falls again and descends, with a very
uniform elevation, to Placerville.

The main divide descends from the Union House to Pleasant Valley,
ten miles, quite rapidly; but from there to Diamond Springs, nine miles
distant, the descent is more gradual.

The Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad is located on the main
ridge up to a point near Diamond Springs; it then turns in a northerly
direction, crosses Weber Creek, and reaches Placerville.

Were it possible, the trunk line of railroad should bo located along the
main ridge. The reasons for leaving it at Diamond Springs, briefly
stated are :

The elevation of the divide at the junction of the toll roads near the
Union House, a point which it is necessary to reach in order to gain the
slope leading to the South Fork of the American River, is four thousand
one hundred feet. The elevation at Diamond Springs, nineteen miles
distant, is one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five feet. It is then
seen that an altitude of two thousand two hundred and twenty-five feet
would have to be overcome in a distance of nineteen miles. -The distance
would probably be increased by following closely the sinuosities of the
ridge; but it is found that the altitude of Pleasant Valley, on the summit
of the ridge, and nearly midway between Diamond Springs and the junc-
tion of the toll roads, is but two thousand five hundred and twenty-five
feet, which shows that a uniform grade along the ridge cannot be main-
tained, and that from Pleasant Valley to the junction, a grade of one
hundred and fifty-seven feet to the mile would be required.

PARTICULAR DESCRIPTION OP LOCATION.

The initial point of the survey of the located line is on the summit of
the divide between Placer Creek and the South Fork of the American

Ill

.River, about one fourth of a mile north of Mr. Kirk's house, in the city
of Placerville. Lines from this point to the present terminus of the
Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad survey, and to other parts
of the city, were run and found practicable. From the initial point the
located line is carried along the left bank of Big Caflon, on a grade of
ninety feet to the mile for one and one half miles, where it crosses the
canon at an elevation of twenty two feet above the bed of the stream.
Thence crossing a low ridge, it curves to the right and passes for a dis-
tance of nine thousand feet over very rough ground, broken by deep
ravines and high intervening ridges. Within this distance there will be
three tunnels — one three hundred feet long, one two hundred feet long,
and one three hundred and fifty feet long; and a trestle bridge over
Wild Goose Canon eight hundred teet in length, with an average hight
of forty-nine feet.

The line then bears to the left, and crosses White Rock Canon about
six hundred feet below the " Live Oak " tunnel, at an elevation of
eighty-four feet above the bottom of the channel. Then piercing the
sharp ridge to the northeast of White Rock Canon, with a tunnel four
hundred and fifty feet in length, the line passes along a comparatively
smooth side hill, broken by but one deep ravine (Coon Gulch) to South
Canon, which it crosses at an elevation of sixty-two feet above the
stream.

The line now deflects to the left, to avoid the high ground from the
main divide between the waters of the South Fork of the American
River and Weber Creek, and to turn the ridge between South and North
canons. This ridge becomes quite narrow a little east of Johnson's Mill,
and is crossed by the line with a tunnel three hundred and seventeen
feet in length. Here the line again curves to the right, and runs in a
general easterly direction across Breslin's Creek and .North Canon, which
latter stream it crosses about one mile below the Hinchman quartz mill.
The ridge between North Canon and Brush Canon maintains a high and
very nearly uniform elevation from the Hinchman mill to a point oppo-
site Johnson's saw mill, a distance of about two miles, and in connection
with the deep canons on each side of it, presents a serious obstacle to
the location of the road. After repeated trials and a modification of the
grade, the line was finally carried through a slight depression in the
ridge with a tunnel one hundred and eighty-seven feet long. The line
then curves to the right, and passing along the slope leading to Brush
Canon, five thousand eight hundred feet, crosses that stream eighty-four
feet above its channel. It now cuiwes to theleft to turn the divide between
Brush and Little Iowa canons. Crossing the divide with a cut fifty-two
feet deep, the line curves to the right and is traced along the left bank
of Little-Lowa Canon two miles to a point where a favorable crossing is
effected. It then takes a general northeasterly direction, crosses Big
Iowa canon and several deep ravines and reaches the head of Long
Canon at a distance of nineteen miles from the place of beginning.

The summit of the divide between Long Canon and Randolph Canon,
was found to be seventy-eight feet above the grade ; and to avoid a very
considerable increase of distance, which would have been necessary in
turning the divide, a tunnel one thousand one hundred and fifty feet is
introduced. The line then curves to the right, crosses Randolph Canon
near its head, pierces the sharp ridge to the north of the canon with a
tunnel three hundred feet in length, and strikes Bartram's new grade
about two miles north of the Thirteen Mile House. The line is then
carried along the north slope of the main divide between the South Fork

112

ot the American and the waters of the Cosumnes River, and passing one
thousand feet north of the Union House, reaches the summit of the
divide art the junction of Fleming's new road with the Ogilby Grade.
Thence keeping on the north side of the divide, it passes eighty feet
south of the Pennsylvania House, four hundred feet north of the Esmer-
alda House, and two hundred feet south of the Alton House, where it
takes a direction nearly east and enters the great gorge through which
Plum Creek flows.

The fall of Plum Creek, like that of many of the larger mountain
streams crossed by the survey, is very unevenly distributed. From its
source near Cold Spi'ings the stream falls about eight hundred feet in a
distance of one mile, after which its descent is very gradual to a point
a little above the crossing of the Ogilby Grade. Here the waters strike
the steep slope of the American' Eiver, and leaping over a succession of
precipices reach that stream in a distance of one mile. It is near the
lower end of this level section that the line enters the valley proper.

The advantages of maintaining the elevation attained at this point
had been clearly established by the preliminary surveys, and although
the line might have been shortened by introducing a descending grade,
a level grade was adopted and maintained for a distance of three and
twenty-eight one hundredths miles. The increase of distance occasioned
"by the introduction of this grade is compensated for in a measure by
bringing the line nearer to an extensive body of very superior timber,
which will undoubtedly prove to be a source of considerable revenue to
the road for a number of years.

From the crossing of Plum Creek the line traverses the right bank of I
the stream on a grade of seventy-nine and two-tenths feet to the mile
for a distance of two and one half miles, where it curves to the right
and regains a direction parallel to the American Eiver. Without mate-
rial deviation from this direction, it is carried along the north slope of
the main divide across Mill Creek, Wolf Creek, Alder Creek, and a num-
ber of smaller streams to a point opposite Webster's Station. Alder
Creek is crossed with a trestle bridge five hundred and ninety-two feet I
long, and at an extreme hight of one hundred and seventy-eight feet.
Subsequent to the location efforts were made to find a more favorable
crossing, but without success. It is believed, however, that by changing
the grades and making some alterations in the line in the vicinity of the
creek the hight of the bridge may be somewhat reduced.

From Webster's Station the line deflects to the right to cross Alpine
Creek, and before again falling into its proper direction runs a distance
of nine and seventy five one-hundredths miles, adding to the length of
the road over an air line, seven and seventy-five one-hundredths miles.
The high ridge between Alpine Creek and the South Fork is crossed
with a tunnel one thousand seven hundred and eighty feet long, and the
line is then carried along the slopes of well defined ridges, generally
maintaining a direct course toward the pass selected for crossing the
western summit of the Sierra Nevada, to a point opposite Strawberry
Valley. Here the line again deflects to the right in order to cross Straw-
berry Creek. This stream flows through a deep and wide canon for
nearly its entire length, and it was found necessary to carry the line up
this creek one and three fourths miles to find a practicable crossing.

Between Strawberry Creek and Sayles Creek there is a high ridge
which terminates in the well known Granite Cliff south of Slippery
Ford. The line is carried along the western slope of this ridge to a
point within six hundred feet of the cliff, when it pierces it with a tun.

113

nel six hundred and fifty feet in length, and then runs along the easterly-
slope to a favorable point for crossing Sayles Creek. Considerable dis-
tance could have been saved at this place by running the line through
the ridge a little north of the crossing of Strawberry Creek, but it would
have required a tunnel three thousand feet in length.

From Sayles Creek the line is traced along the low ridge south of
Swan's toll road to Audrain's Station, where it finally crosses the South
Fork of the American River, and with easy curves follows the slope of
the mountain to the summit of the Sierra Nevada, reaching the same at
the point where the old county road begins to descend into Lake Yalley,
having attained an elevation of seven thousand three hundred and
seventy-three seventy-four one hundredths feet above tide water.

From the summit the line deflects to the south, and descending with a
grade of ninety-five feet to the mile crosses Little Truckee River at the
head of Lake Yalley — two miles from the summit — with a trestle bridge
eight hundred and thirty-two feet long, with an average hight of forty
feet. Continuing to descend with a grade of 63.36 feet to the mile, the
line follows the face of the mountain to the east of Lake Valley, strik-
ing the valley near Pixley's saw-mill. From this point it runs in nearly
a straight course to the stone monument established by the Boundary
Commission at the intersection of the State line with Kingsbury's toll
road, ninety-one and ninety-two hundreths miles from the place of
beginning.

At the end of the Third Division, a distance of sixty-six and sixty-one
one-hundredths miles from Placerville, the tunnel line diverges to the
left, crosses Sayles Creek, and on a descending grade of fifty-nine and
sixty-six one-hundredths feet per mile, runs along the mountain side
until it reaches the South Fork of the Amei'ican River, which it crosses
at an elevation of one hundred and fifteen feet above its channel. Then
ascending with a grade of seventy-nine and two-tenths feet per mile, it
is carried along on the left bank of the Slippery Ford branch until it
reaches the western terminus of the tunnel, the distance being three
and seventy-four one-hundredths miles.

From Johnson's Pass, seventy-three miles from Placerville, it is pro-
posed to survey a line around the south end of Lake Yalley, and over
the eastern summit through Luther's Pass, which has an elevation of
seven thousand five hundred feet. Thence pursuing the mountain slopes
on the north side of Carson river, with moderate grades and curvature
until the plains in Carson Valley are reached. A line might also be car-
ried around the southern end of Hope Valley and down the south side
of Carson River, striking the plains at the junction of the east and west
forks. On this route heavier gradients will doubtless be required than
by that on the north bank of the river. Sufficient information has been
gained concerning the proposed line through Luther's Pass to insure its
practicability, but not enough for a detailed estimate.

Maps and profiles of the route are herewith submitted.

The following table exhibits the several grades on the summit line
from Placerville to the State line :

17a

114

TABLE OP GRADES

ON THE SAN FRANCISCO AND WASHOE KAILKOAD.

No. Of
Grade.

Length of

Grade in

Feet.

30,000

18,722

2,278

5,600

2,500

6,100

6,800

10,000

26,000

10,550

10,250

4,200

5,800

4,800

8,900

17,300

26,740

5,860

1,000

6,500

19,800

1,000

6,000

100

13,900

6,000

1,000

27,600

21,400

87,000

11,000

69,700

3,700

7,269

Rise of

Grade per

100 feet.

1.80

1.71
1.80
1.71
1.50
1.71
1.80
1.71
1.80
1.50
1.108

.934

.30
1.00
1.10
Level.
1.50

.96
Level.

.95
1.486
1.35

.95

.50
1.00
1.51
Level.
1.80

.95
1.51
1.80
1.20

.69
1.14

Rise of

Grade in

Feet.

540.00

320.15

41.00

95.76

37.50

104.31

122.40

171.00

468.00

158.25

113.56

17.47

48.00
97.90

401.10
56.26

61.75
294.23

13.50

57.00

.50

139.00

90.60

496.80

203.30

1,313.70

25.53

Fall of
Grade in

Feet.

39.60

198.00
836.40

82.87

Elevation

Length of

above

Grade in

Tide in Feet.

Miles.

2,490.30

5.68

2,810.45

3.55

2,851.45

.43

2,947.21

1.06

2,984.71

.47

3,089.02

1.16

3,211.42

1.29

3,382.42

1.89

3,850.42

4.92

4,008.67

2.00

4,122.23

1.94

4,082.63

.79

4,100.10

1.10

4,148.10

.91

4,246.00

1.68

4,246.00

3.28

4,647.10

5.06

4,703.36

1.11

4,703.36

.19

4,765.11

1.23

5,059.34

3.75

5,072.84

.19

5,129.84

1.15

5,130.34

.02

5,269.34

2.63

5,359.94

1.15

5,359.94

.19

5,856.74

5.23

6,060.04

4.05

7,373.74

16.47

7,175.74

2.08

6,339.34

13.20

6,364.87

.70

6,282.00

1.38

Grade per

Mile in

Feet.

9,5.00
90.29
95.00
90 29
79.20
90.29
95.00
90.29
95.00
79.20
58.50
49.79
15.84
52.80
58.08

"79"20
50.55

"**5o!37

78.46
71.28
50.16
26.40
52.80
79.73

* 95:ci

50.16
79.73
95.00
63.36
36.43
60.19

f ALIGNMENT.

It will be seen by inspecting the map, that the located line, as a whole,
is quite direct; but in conveying the line through a rough, mountainous
country, much curvature is necessarily involved. The curves are, how-
ever, entirely practicable, having in no instanco a radius less than six
hundred and thirty-seven feet, or nine degrees. The Baltimore and
Ohio Eailroad, and many other eastern roads, are, successfully operated
over much sharper curves. A speed of thirty miles per hour has been
maintained on the Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad, which
has nine degree curves, and gradients of ninety-five feet per mile.

The following table will show the number of curves and degree of
curvature :

115

No. Deg. of Curv. Radius.

2 1° 5,730 feet.

1. 1°.30' .....3,820 «

2 1°.45' 3,274 .«

3 2°.15' 2,547 "

7 2°.30' 2,292 "

18 3° 1,910 "

17 3°.30' 1,637 "

17 4° 1,433 "

4 4°.30' 1,274 "

36 5° 1,146 "

No. Deg. of Curv. Radius.

1 ..5°.15' 1,092 feet

124

5°

3(1'

5°

45'

6°

30'

7°

8°

.30'

8°

30'

9°

997
955
882
819
764
717
675
637

Tunnels have been resorted to when necessity or economy required
their use. On the summit line they are generally short, and piercing
a granite formation, will require neither shafting nor lining.

On the First Division there is :

No.
1

Feet Long.

187

200

No.
1

Feet Long.
350

450

300

1,150

317

325

On the Second Division there is :

No.

Feet Long.

No.

Feet Long.

130

288

140

300

230

400

270

—

274

On the Third Division there is

No. Feet Long.

i ; 500

1 650

1 675

No.
1..

Feet Long.

,..1,780

.3,605

On the Fourth Division there is one two hundred and thirty-six feet
long.

Making a total of twenty-three tunnels, with an aggregate length of
nine thousand seven hundred and fifty-two feet, at an average cost of
eighty-six dollars and forty-two cents per lineal foot.

• 116

The estimates for tunneling are somewhat higher than has heretofore
been given. 1 will here remark, that in all estimates of the kind 1 have
been guided by experience gained from the construction of the P. & S.
V. R. JR. And in many instances where the estimates must necessarily
be somewhat speculative, the prices have been placed high enough to
cover such contingencies as may arise, endeavoring, if possible, to avoid
the too common error of low estimates.

SNOW.

It has been already observed, that the altitude of Strawberry was
found to be higher than fixed by early barometical observation. This
fact no way affects the relative altitudes eastward from that place, nor
changes the fact concerning the snow fall, as have been exhibited in for-
mer reports.

The experience of years has proven that there has been less depth of
snow in the Johnson and Luther passes than in any other passes, either
higher or lower along the central portion of the Sierra Nevada; while on
the eastern range, in the gaps opposite and to the north of Johnson's
Pass, the fall is so light that it would prove no obstruction to trains.

Among the various reasons suggested in explanation of the phenomena
of light snow fall in the favored regions of the Sierra, the following offers
a reasonable theory :

All of the passes north of Johnson's Pass are on the easterly side of the
range, and terminate in that direction in extensive plateaus of high ele-
vations, the sides of which are fringed with high peaks and short ranges.
The rain clouds, which leave the ocean generally move toward the Great
Basin, in a direction due north. These moisture bearing clouds are in-
tercepted by the high peaks and plateaus, and fall in the shape of snow.
The broadest and most exposed mountain top receives the greatest
depth ; while on the narrower parts, which expose less surface for con-
densation, the depth of snow is very much decreased.

By examining a topographical map of the central Sierra, it will be per-
ceived that Bound Top and a cluster of peaks which lie to the southward
of Johnson's Pass, protect it to a great extent, as well as a portion of the
range lying east of Lake Tahoe. While the Bonner Lake Pass, to the
northward, and its elevated plateau, are exposed to the full force of the
storms, and, in consequence, snow falls very deeply. It is also to be ob-
served, that the snow falls in Tahoe Lake Valley to a depth of five or
six feet, while in the Bonner Lake Yalley, which has less elevation,
snow falls to the depth of twenty-five and thirty feet.

ESTIMATES.

For a number of miles east from Placerville, the deep mining cuts,
shafts and tunnels reveal the character of the formation beneath the sur-
face of the ground; and for the remaining distance the graded roads in
the vicinity of the line, and the numerous ravines which furrow the
mountain sides enable very close observations to be made concerning the
kind of material to be removed. No pains has been spared to procure
accurate information on these points, and to obtain the quantity and
character of the masonry required.

Many of the trestle bridges are intended but for temporary purposes
to expedite the construction of the road, it being designed to replace
them with embankments as they require renewing. Abundance of sugar

117

pine, spruce, pitch pine tamarack and cedar timber is to be found along
the line, which will not only furnish superior and convenient materials
tor the structures, ties, etc., but its transportation to the Sacramento
Yalley will be a large source of revenue to the road.

ESTIMATE OF COST OE GRADUATION, MASONRY AND BRIDGING.

FIRST DIVISION.

From Plaeerville to the head of Long Canon, 19.13 Miles.

848,871 cubic yards of earth excavation, at 30 cents.

150,581 cubic yards of solid rock, at $1 75

50,194 cubic yards of loose rock, at 70 cents

5,232 cubic yards of masonry, at $8 00 •

9,751 cubic yards of masonry, at $2 25

11,680 lineal feet trestle bridging

3,579 lineal feet tunnels

Grubbing and clearing, $1,000 per mile

Total ,

254,661 30

263,516 75

35,135 80

41,856 00

21,939 75

178,167 40

305,520 00

19,130 00

61,119,927 00

SECOND DIVISION.

From head of Long Canon to Alder Creek, 19.18 Miles.

813,995 cubic yards earth excavation, at 30 cents

201,191 cubic yards of solid rock excavation, at $1 75

67,064 cubic yards loose rock excavation, at 70 cents,
j 1,280 cubic yards masonry, at $12 00 ,

4,813 cubic yards masonry, at $8 00

j 15,470 cubic yards masonry, at $2 25

10,800 lineal feet trestle bridging

2,332 lineal feet tunnels

Grubbing and clearing, $1,000 per mile

Total

244,198 50

352,084 25

46,944 80

15,360 00

38.504 00

34,807 50

197,543 20

181,160 00

19,180 00

$1,129,782 25

THIRD DIVISION.

From Alder Creek to Strawberry, 28.3 Miles.

659,560 cubic yards of earth excavation, at 30 cents

192,856 cubic yards of solid rock excavation, at $1 75...
64,285 cubic yards of loose rock excavation, at 70 cents

3,138 cubic yard*of masonry, at $12

5,801 cubic yards of masonry, at $8

15,290 cubic yards of masonry, at $2 25

6,496 lineal feet trestle bridging

3,605 lineal feet tunnels.

Grubbing and clearing, at $1,000 per mile

Total

197,868 00

337,498 00

44,999 50

37,656 00

46,408 00

34,402 50

138,891 50

337,250 00

28,300 00

$1,203,273 50

118

FOURTH DIVISION.

From Strawberry to State Line, 25.31 Miles.

654,770 cubic yards of earth excavation, at 30 cents

174,623 cubic yards of solid rock excavation, at $1 75....
58,207 cubic yards of loose rock excavation, at 70 cents..

6,064 cubic yards masonry, at $8

5,638 cubic yards masonry, at $2 25

5,168 lineal feet trestle bridging

236 lineal feet tunnels

Grabbing and clearing, at #1,000 per mile

Total

196,431 00
305,590 25
40,744 90
48,512 00
12,685 50
67,558 08
18,880 00
25,310 00

715,711 73

ESTIMATED COST OP ONE MILE OP SUPERSTRUCTURE.

94 640-2240 tons of iron rails, 60 lbs to the yard, at $90

442 wrought iron chairs, 10 lbs. each, 4,420 lbs., at 10 cents

924 spikes, £ lb. each, at 10 cents

2,640 cross ties, 8 feet long, 6x8 inches, at 50 cents

Distributing material and laying track

Total ...

8,485 70
442 00
462 00

1,320 00
900 00

11,609 70

SUMMARY OF COST OF CONSTRUCTION.

Graduation, masonry and bridging

Superstructure for 97 miles, including | miles for side
tracks, at $11,609 70 per mile

Add 10 per cent, for engineering and superintendence

Total cost of constructing the road

$4,168,694 48
1,126,140 90

),294,835 38
529,483 54

>,824,318 92

BUILDINGS AND FIXTURES.

Machine Shop

Terminus Stations

Way Stations

Engine Houses

Turn Tables

Total

60,000 00
40,000 00
30,000 00
30,000 00
9,000 00

169,000 00

119

EQUIPMENT.

25 locomotive engines, at $18,000
50 passenger coaches, at $3,000 ..,
200 covered freight cars, at $1,000
50 platform cars, at
75 gravel cars, at $400
15 hand cars, at

Total

450,000 00
150,000 00
200,000 00
,40,000 00
30,000 00
2,250 00

$ 872,250 00

RECAPITULATION.

The whole amount required to build the road, and put in operation to the

State Line, will be :

For construction of road

Buildings and fixtures

Engines and cars

Eight of way, fencing and contingents

Total cost to State line ,

>,824,318 92
169,000 00
872,250 00
150,000 00

$7,015,568 92

Distance — say 92 miles; or an average cost of $76,256 per mile.
Additional cost to the Divide, between Carson and Washoe valleys.

State Line to Divide, 29 miles, at $59,000.
Making a total cost of.

$^,711,000 00

5,726,568 92

Distance — 121 miles; or an average cost of $72,120 per mile.

The cost of constructing the division which embraces the tunnel,
eighteen and one half miles, will be two million one hundred and eighty
thousand two hundred and fifty dollars — making the total cost of the
road by the tunnel line, ten million one hundred and ninety-one thou-
sand one hundred and seven dollars.

Distance, one hundred and fourteen and eleven one hundreths miles,
or an average cost of eighty-nine thousand three hundred and nine dol-
lars per mile.

A comparison of these estimates with those made by the officers of the
United States, and the Central Pacific Eailroad Company, upon the cost
of a railroad across the mountains must satisfy the most incredulous of
the superiority of this route.

The surveys were carried no further than the western terminus of the
tunnel, on the Slippery Ford Branch, and the State boundary in Lake
Valley. The explorations of one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two
yielded sufficient information to insure the certainty of a good location

120

from the eastern terminus of the tunnel along the spur on the south side
of Fallen Leaf Lake across Lake Valley, through the Walton Pass, and
down to the divide, between Washoe and Eagle valleys — a point which
commands the approaches of Virginia City, Carson City, and the lower
valleys.

It was not deemed expedient to go to further expense of surveys until
the definite route into Carson Valley had been decided upon. The de-
termination of this question involves the necessity of a careful compari-
son between the tunnel line and the summit line. If the tunnel line
should be adopted, then Walton's Pass will afford the best and most
direct entrance into Carson Valley ; but should it be determined to
carry the line over the summit, then it is believed that it should enter
the valley through Luther's Pass.

This pass is of easy access from Johnson's Summit, with an ascend-
ing grade, and becomes really the summit, and the only summit crossed
by the line.

The line through Luther's Pass would possess the additional advan-
tage of intercepting at a nearer point the business of the Owens River,
Esmeralda, and the Silver Mountain mines, together with that of the
southern portion of Carson Valley.

The great advantage of the tunnel line is obviously the saving of
altitude, and the consequent reduction of the amount of snow to be con-
tended with. The great length of the tunnel — three and three fourths
miles — and the difficulty of ascertaining the nature of the material, and
other matters, which will necessarily enter into the cost of constructing
the same, should not be lost sight of in a comparison of this with the
summit line.

By reference to the profile of that part of the summit line between
the point where the tunnel line diverges and the State line, it will be
observed that the work is exceedingly light, and the fact that with the
exception of a short distance at the summit the line runs on a steep side
hill, affording an easy means of disposing of the snow which may accu-
mulate on %he track during the winter storms, is an answer to the
principal objection to this line.

The nature and extent of the traffic between California and Nevada is
well known. Statistics concerning it have been so frequently published
that I deem it unnecessary to enter into an elaborate estimate of the
amount of business which will be done by your road. It is sufficient to
say that careful estimates show that the earnings would be very large,
and will return a liberal interest on the capital invested.

My thanks are due Mr. Thos. J. Arnold, principal assistant engineer,
who had sole charge of the location. The accuracy and rapidity of the
survey will best attest his ability and energy.

Respectfully submitted.

FRANCIS A. BISHOP,
Chief Engineer S. F. and W. R. R.

LETTER

L. L. ROBINSON

LETTER OF L. L. ROBINSON, C. E.,

ON TKANSMOUNTAIN KAILWAYS.

Sacramento, February 3d, 1865.

To Chas. A. Sumner and Henry Epstein,

Chairmen Committees on Railroads, Legislature of Nevada :

Dear Sirs — On my return from San Francisco this a. m., I am placed
in possession of your favor of twenty-eighth ultimo, requesting me to
appear before your committee. I regret exceedingly to say that my
business engagements at San Francisco this coming week are of such a
nature as to preclude me from complying with your request. I suppose
the matter at issue will be closed one way or the other before my return
from the Bay would enable me to reach Carson.

So far as the merits of the question at issue are concerned, I think
your resolution* is equitable and right, and only regret that sufficient
time will not be allowed your Committee to enable you to familiarize
yourselves with the enormous obstacles in the way of building any rail-
wajT across the mountains.

I knew Mr. Judah well; have known him for many years previous to

_ 1 .

*Mr. Robinson refers to the "Epstein resolutions," which had been introduced in the
Assembly, and which read as follows :

"Whereas, The speedy completion and establishment of railway communication between
the navigable waters of the Pacific and the Mining Districts of Nevada is vitally important
to the interests of this State ; therefore, be it

"Resolved, by the Assembly, the Senate concurring, That our Senators be, and are hereby
instructed, and our Representives in Congress be requested, to use their utmost endeavors to
secure the pa- sage of a law by Congress giving the sum of ten miillon dollars ($10,000,000), in
United States bonds, at dates of thirty years or less, to such corporation as shall first complete
aline of railway, and establish the same in perfect running order, without break or interval of
stage transportation, between the navigable waters of the Sacramento river and the eastern
slope of the Sierra Nevada.

"Resolved, That his Excellency the Governor be requested to transmit a copy of these reso-
lutions to each of our Senators and to our Representative in Congress, by telegraph."

These resolutions passed the Assembly on the twentieth of February, one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-five, by the following vote :

Ayes— Brown, Bien, Carey, Cutter, Denson, Epstein, Hinckley, Hawkins, Mayhugh, Mc.
Keeby, Nichols, Parker, Rosenblatt, Rigby, Small, Sine, St. Clair, Toombs, Wellington— 19,

Noes— Bearss, Beck, Bolan, Bishop, Bond, Dunn, Greeley, Haskell, Lee, Myrick, Patten,
Shackleford, Smith, Walter, Young, Tozer— 16.

The same passed the Senate on the twenty-seventh of February, by the following vote :

Ayes Clagett, Doron, Haines, Hobart, James, Lockwood, Proctor, Seely, Slingerland,

Sumner, Thompson— 11.
Noes— Hutchins, Ives, Kellogg, Lambert, Larrowe, Winton — 6.

124

his death ; knew of his explorations and examinations across the moun-
tains; and know he never even rode over the Placerville routes, never
crossed the mountains via American Eiver Valley. The Central Pacific
Eaiiroad have (according to their own statement) never had a locating
survey across the mountains ; and the only maps, profiles and estimates
which were ever made by Mr. Judah were entirely preliminaries; no
reliance at all can be placed upon the estimates of cost, or anything con-
nected with that reconnoissance beyond Illinoistown. From Illinoistown
(a point not as near to Virginia as Latrobe) to summit of the Sierra, the
route is truly tremendous. I have been connected with a wagon road
crossing from Dutch Flat to Henness Pass road, and am therefore
familiar with the country. I have had much experience — some twenty-
five years connection with railways — as an engineer; have examined
personally all the engineering works of importance in Europe and the
United States ; have seen much heavy work ; have constructed railways
where the gradation cost over one hundred thousand dollars per mile
for five miles consecutive, and I must confess all my ideas of physical
obstacles in the construction of railways were so completely below the
difficulties to be encountered on route of Central Pacific Railroad that I
could not conceive any set of men would seriously undertake to construct
a railway over such a country.

From Illinoistown to Dutch Flat, any railway must encounter work so
costly, and so long a time must be required to construct it, as to weaken
the hopes of finding capital and patience sufficient to build it. From
Dutch Flat to the Summit is still heavier. From the Summit to Truckee
is worse than all.

The celebrated engineering work built for the Austrian Government —
a railway across the Semmening Alps, from Vienna to Trieste — is a
bagatelle as compared with the projected line via Dutch Flat. I can see
no obstacles in the way to Illinoistown ; but from there it is so heavy,
reports and newspaper publications to the contrary, that even Mr.
Judah became convinced the route was a hopeless one, and on his return
from Washington, after the franchise was granted, urged the advisability
of not fixing the route of the road until he or tho Company could exam-
ine other routes ; and he opposed the location as it now exists. The
fixing the route of the road where it is was the cause of his leaving the
service of the Company ; for when he went to New York the last time
he had left the service of the Company, and never intended to re-enter
it. They gave him one hundred thousand dollars of their first mortgage
bonds (which he left in his will) in order that he should not state what
his examinations led him to know was the fact, that the Dutch Flat
route was a hopeless one.

Judah possessed no interest in the wagon road ; the Directors did ;
and the wagon road ruled the location, regardless entirely of the merits
of the route for a railroad.

Had your committee time, and could the maps, etc., of the Central
Pacific Eaiiroad be brought before you, with an expert to examine them,
and with the field notes of the surveys, you would readily comprehend
why I write so plainly about that route.

The Company themselves (see Eogers' Eeport) say they have no loca-
ting survey beyond Illinoistown. Yet their engineers have made one,
or had made one long before Eogers' questions, for I examined the stakes
along the line ; and my engineering experience leaves me no other view
of the case, than that they found the work so heavy they dare not make
public the results of the location.

125

Mr. Bishop's survey, (Placerville route,) I have seen. It has been
closely and carefully made, and may be relied upon with much certainty,
so far as one line of survej^s can exhibit anything. I cannot doubt but the
adoption of the same maximum grades and minimum radius of curva-
ture on Mr. Bishop's route as is adopted on Dutch Flat route would very
materially cheapen the cost and expedite the completion of the work
on the former route.

So far as the geography of the routes is concerned, the Placerville
route certainly subserves the interests of the State of Nevada far better
than the Central Pacific Eailroad. The latter is forced to descend the
Truckee drainage, and so passes to the north of even Virginia, requiring
a railroad some forty miles long to reach Virginia; as it becomes neces-
sary to cross near to the Carson drainage before a railroad can ascend to
Virginia. From the Truckee, the Central Pacific Eailroad route runs
north of Eeese Elver, and the two routes would not converge until they
reached a point far to the eastward of Eeese Eiver. The Placerville
route, if they adopt the Luther's Pass route, which is known to be
highly practicable, and descend the Carson Canon to the valley, would be
in proximity to the most densely populated portions of your State —
would pass north of Esmeralda and Walker Eiver districts, would
accommodate the Owens Eiver district, pass through the capital of the
State, within six or seven miles of Virginia, through Dayton and Eeese
Eiver, and would be much more available and desirable to the State than
any other route.

I am so much an advocate of a Pacific Eailroad that I would gladly
advocate any route which could be built; but I am opposed to "going it
blind" upon the verbal representations of a set of men that they are in
possession of the only route across the mountains, and lay everybody
under contribution to aid in buiiding a railroad far enough into the
mountains to turn all the freight and travel upon their wagon road.
Even then, if it were the most available and feasible route across the
mountains, I would advocate it and contribute to it cheerfully. But
feeling assured, as I do, that a road cannot be built upon that route with
any reasonable expenditure of capital, or within any reasonable time, I
am in favor of an examination of all routes; and when the best one is
found, am in favor of it. The policy of your new State in this particular
should be, I think, to offer the largest bonus you can in aid of any rail-
road that'first reaches your State line; such a policy can hurt no interest
except the Central Pacific Eailroad. It stimulates competition, offers
inducements to enterprise and capital, sets engineers at work to find the
best route; and under such a policy, you may rest assured, your State
will have a railway connection with this State very much quicker than
by any other mode. With such a policy one thing is certain — the short-
est and cheapest route will be found, and the one that takes least time in
construction.

From my intimate acquaintance with Mr. Judah, and my experience
of the value to be placed on his estimates of cost, coupled with rny own
knowledge of the country to be passed over by the Central Pacific Eail-
road, I feci well assured that no reliance can be placed upon his original
estimates of cost upon that route. If these were to be trebled, I think
they would still be below the result. His survey (I saw his plans in his
office often) were not of a character to base any estimate of cost upon.
His maps and profiles were what is known among engineers as " con-
structed," that is, " projected;" and I challenge, openly, the production

126 ,

of any field notes, plans, or estimates, upon which thv estimates were
published to the world.

As you may not be in possession of facilities for ascertaining the cost
per mile of some of the railroads in the United States, which have been
above the average, I inclose you a memorandum of cost, as published in
their reports, of some twenty or more railroads, showing the actual cost
per mile as built in the East, where labor and material were less than
one half the cost here, even before the war j also showing approximately
what the same amount of work would have cost in this State.

By glancing your eye over the list you will easily see that not a rail-
road among them crosses any mountain range at all to be compared with
the Sierra. The highest summit reached by any one of the roads in
the list is, probably, the Pennsylvania Central .Railroad or the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad. The highest point reached by either is not one third
the hight of the summit reached , by the Central Pacific Railroad, nor
were the physical obstacles encountered on any one of the roads in the
list at all to be compared with those to be encountered by the Central
Pacific Railroad ; for we find none on the list I send which would cost in
California less than one hundred and twenty thousand dollars per mile.

My firm conviction is, that the Central Pacific Railroad will cost two
hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand dollars a mile
before it is completed to the Truckee, stocked and equipped as a first
class railroad.

Much stress is laid upon the fact that the Central Pacifie Railroad
have some twenty miles of iron on hand. The " Placerville " have fully
that amount also on hand in California. It should be borne in mind that
while on ordinary railroads the cost of iron, etc., is a very important
item in the cost of roads, and when once provided is deemed a great
element of success ; on the Central Pacific Railroad the cost of iron is
so small a portion of the cost as not to become at all essential in the
completion of the work. So far as the Placerville route and the Sacra-
mento Valley Railroad are concerned, they have thus far progressed
from private means ; and by so doing, are, I am sorry to say, looked
upon almost as public enemies. Yet we expect to keep at it, and all we
ask is a fair show; and if your State is willing to help a railroad, she
may (if you please) pile up her contribution at the State line, and the
first locomotive which reaches it shall carry it away. This is all the con-
dition we ask; and if private enterprise and capital do not bring the
bonus away, then we are satisfied that another enterprise should take it.

Yours, respectfully,

L. L. ROBINSON,

Civil Engineer.

127

COMPARATIVE COSTS OF RAILROAD CONSTRUCTION.

[Same roads would cost in California, allowing difference in cost of
labor and materials, as per statement below. L. L. £.]

RAILROADS.

COST PER MILE,

COST IN CALIF'A.

Boston and Worcester

Western

Boston and Providence

Fitchburg ,

Boston and Lowell .

Boston and Maine

Eastern ,

Baltimore and Ohio

Camden and Amboy

New Jersey

Warren

New York and Erie

Hudson River

New York Central

Harlem

Delaware, Lackawana and W'n

Pennsylvania Central

Reading

Vermont Central

Grand Trunk, Canada

Great Western

Panama

§100,000
80,000
75,000
70,000

100,000
60,000

100,000
70,000

100,000
80,000
80,000
85,000
75,000
90,000
70,000
70,000
90,000

150,000
75,000
75,000

100,000

170,000

6200,000
160,000
150,000
150,000
200,000
120,000
200,000
150,000
200,000
160,000
160,000
170,000
150,000
180,000
140,000
140,000
180,000
300,000
150,000
150,000
200,000
170,000

LELAND STAMOBD, PRES'T C. P.E. E. CO.

LETTER OF L. L. ROBINSON.

18a

LELAND STANFORD'S REPLY

TO THE LETTEE OP L. L. EOBINSON.

Office of the Central Pacific Batlroad Company, )
Sacramento, February 14, 1865. J

To the Hon. C. A. Sumner and H. Epstein,

Chairmen of Railroad Committees :
Gentlemen: — Eecently I received a printed copy of a letter dated
Pebru.nrjr third, directed to you, purporting to have been signed by one
L. L. Eobinson, of this city, containing charges against this Company,
of which I have been President since its organization. Eecently, and
since the death of T. D. Judah, Esq., the late Chief Engineer of this
Company, I have heard rumors of a similar character, and emanating
from the same and kindred sources, but this is the first time they have
appeared in a tangible form, so that they could be fairly met. Lest
your committees, who may not be aware of the true facts, should be mis-
led by the numerous falsehoods in that letter, and especially as a matter
of justice to the memory of Mr. Judah, it is proper that it should not
be suffered to pass without notice.

ROBINSON THE ENEMY OF JUDAH.

Mr. Eobinson states that he was intimately acquainted with Mr.
Judah, and seeks to convey the impression that he was his confidential
friend. Such, at least, was not the case during Mr. Judah's connection
with our Company. From the time Mr. Judah entered the service of
this Company in one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, our relations
were necessarily very intimate, and I know, as do others of his personal
friends, that he regarded Mr. Eobinson as his bitterest enemy. He often
referred to previous railroad transactions, both in this State and Plorida,
in which he claimed that the latter had wronged him, of the'truth of
which, however, I know nothing, except what I learned from Mr. Judah.
But of this I am certain, that while Mr. Judah was in the employ of this
Company, Mr. Eobinson was the last man he would have selected as a
confidant, or even as friend.

JUDAH RECOMMENDED THE ROUTE.

\ I am certain that he never told Mr. Eobinson, or any other person,
that the route selected by this Company for their railroad "was a hopeless

132

one," or that he " opposed the location as it now exists," for Mr. Judah
was a truthful man, and such a statement would have been a falsehood.
Mr. Judah never opposed the route as located, but always recommended
it in the strongest terms, and it was upon the strength of that recom-
mendation, officially made as our Chief Engineer, that the present route
was selected. And on this point 1 will say, that there was no dissenting
voice among the Directors in making the location, nor have they, at any
time since, entertained the least doubt of the wisdom of that selection.
The location was not made until after a personal examination by several
of the Directors, of that and various other routes mentioned in Mr.
Judah's report.

HIS REPORTS PROVE IT.

In that letter Mr. Eobinson endeavors to implicate Mr. Judah in an
attempt to practice one of the basest of frauds. He tells you that the
latter knew that the route thus selected was impracticable. This charge
is made in the face of the fact, that Mr. Judah had published to the
world, in various reports over his own signature, as the Chief Engineer
of this Company, in which he recommends this very route in the
strongest terms, and not content with a mere recommendation, he fully
sets forth its peculiar advantages in detail, and the reasons why it was
to be preferred to other routes.

HIS REASONS GIVEN.

These reasons will be found on pages ten and eleven of his report,
made in October, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and are as
follows :

THE PROMINENT FEATURES OP THIS LINE MAY BE BRIEFLY ENUMERATED AS FOLLOWS!

First. It crosses the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and reaches the
Truckee Eiver in one hundred and twenty-three, and State line in one
hundred and forty-five miles from Sacramento.

Second. Big Bend of Truckee, or Humboldt Desert, is reached in one
hundred and seventy-eight miles.

Third. It crosses the State at nearly its narrowest width.

Fourth. It pursues nearly a direct course from Sacramento to the Big
Bend of Truckee.

Fifth. It forms a local road for the counties of Sacramento, Placer
and Nevada.

Sixth. It commands and will perform the entire business of Nevada
Territory, Washoe, and the silver mineral region.

Seventh. It will also command the business of the newly discovered
Humboldt mineral district, Pyramid Lake, Esmeralda, and Mono min-
eral districts.

Eighth. It crosses the Truckee Meadows at the head of Steamboat
Valley, which, with Washoe Valley and Eagle Valley, connects with
Carson Valley, enabling a branch road, with light grades, to be built to
any point on Carson River.

Ninth. It reaches eastern base of Sierra Nevada in eleven and one
half miles from Summit.

Tenth. It follows the valley of Truckee Eiver, without obstacle, to
Big Bend, or Humboldt Desert.

133

Eleventh. It entirely avoids the second summit of Sierra Nevada.

Twelfth. Its maximum grades are one hundred and five feet per mile,
or less than those of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

Thirteenth. The grades down the Truckee will not exceed forty feet
per mile.

Fourteenth. The elevation of line is maintained, continuously to the
summit — there being no down grade running easterly to Summit.

Fifteenth. A uniformly descending grade is maintained from the
summit easterly to the Truckee, or eastern base.

Sixteenth. Encounters no elevated plateau of table-land at Summit.

Seventeenth. Running to and from Summit with maximum grades,
cannot have an extensive snow-line.

Eighteenth. Runs through extensive forests of pitch and sugar pine,
fir, cedar, and tamarac, which latter two species of timber are abundant,
and will furnish excellent cross-ties.

Nineteenth. Crosses no deep river canons or gorges.

Twentieth. Its longest tunnel will not exceed one thousand three
hundred and fifty feet in length, and no shafting will be required.

Twenty-first. Shortest radius of curvature, five hundred and seventy-
three feet.

Twenty-second. Navigable waters of Sacramento River at all seasons
of the year its western terminus; Washoe and the Grand Basin its east-
ern terminus.

Twenty-third. At Big Bend of Truckee, the line is in position to pro-
ceed via the Humboldt to Salt Lake, or follow the Simpson route to
same point.

Twenty-fourth. Saving in distance over route via Madelin Pass and
head waters of Sacramento, as surveyed by Lieutenant Beckwith, from
Lassen's Meadows, or Humboldt crossing, one hundred and eighty-four
miles.

Twenty-fifth. Saving in cost of Pacific Railroad line, taking Lieuten-
ant Beckwith's estimate from Lassen's Meadows, or Humboldt crossing,
as compared with cost of present proposed line, in thirteen and one half
millions of dollars.

Twenty-sixth. Reduces the time of passenger transit to and from
"Washoe to eight and one half hours. Passengers leaving Virginia
station at five o'clock A. M., will reach San Francisco the same evening.

Twenty-seventh. Saving in cost of transportation of freight to citi-
zens of Washoe or Nevada Territory, one millions of dollars per year.

Twenty-eighth. Affords a market for low class silver ores (now
thrown aside), for shipment to Europe, from over three thousand mining
claims.

Twenty-ninth. Is advantageousl}7 located for an extension to Oregon.

Thirtieth. Completes first western link of Pacific Railroad, overcom-
ing its greatest difficulties.

So, also, in his report of one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three,
he sets forth at length the comparative merits of the different routes ex-
amined by him, and conclusively establishes the superiority of the route
selected.

ROBINSON CHARGES JUDAH WITH FRAUD.

If Mr. Robinson's statement is true, then Mr. Judah, in making this
report, thus recommending that route, was guilty of a willful falsehood,

134

and perpetrated a deliberate fraud upon this Company and the public;
and he carried out the fraud, and imposed upon the members of Con-
gress and the National Government, in laboring for the passage of the
Pacific Eailroad bill, and using his surveys, maps and profiles for that
purpose.

HE CHARGES HIM WITH CORRUPTION

To add still further to the malignancy of his statement, he charges
that Mr. Judah obtained from the Company one hundred thousand dol-
lars of its bonds, not to expose this, his own, villainous fraud. The state-
ment as thus made virtually refutes itself, for if he had been guilty of
such deceit, of such a stupendous fraud upon the Companjr, upon the
Government, and the public, he certainly would have kept it secret, for
who so interested as himself to conceal it? Above all, he would never
have disclosed it to his deadliest enemy, or the Company who would be
so greatly injured.

THE BASENESS OP THESE" CHARGES.

Happily, Mr. Judah's character as an engineer, respecting which he
was peculiarly sensitive, and as a man of integrity, stands too high to
be reached by such infamous assaults. His friends will read these
charges with astonishment, if they can be astonished at anything com-
ing from such a source. These charges are made after he has been laid
in the silent tomb. They never would have been made if he was
living. The author of these base charges stands, by his own confession,
in no enviable position, having participated, by his silence for years, in
covering up the alleged fraud. He stamps his own character with in-
famy, while attempting to stab that of the dead.

CHARGE OP BRIBERY DENIED.

As to the charge that Mr. Judah received from this Company one hun-
dred thousand dollars of its bonds, to induce him to conceal his own
fraud, or for any other purpose, it is absolutely false, and without even a
shadow of foundation. The Companj^ paid him a liberal salary for his
valuable services as their Chief Engineer. That salary was paid in the
stock of the Company, and in cash, but none of it in bonds. Whatever
bonds he may have held, were obtained in private transactions with
other persons, with which transactions the Company had nothing to do.
So, also, the statement that he left the service of the Company is equally
false, as he continued its Chief Engineer up to his death.

ROBINSON NOT SATISPIED WITH SURVEYS.

Mr. Eobinson, it appears, is not satisfied with the character of the sur-
veys made by this Company. They were not made to satisfy him, or at
his suggestion, request or advice, nor did he pay a cent to have them
made. They were made for, and under the direction of, this Company,
who paid large sums to have the work well done. The first one was made
under directions to make a thorough, accurate, instrumental survey of a
route for a railroad over the mountains, and especially of all points where
serious difficulties might be expected ; a survey upon which railroad cap-
talists could rely in investing their money. Mr. Judah carried out these

135

instructions to the satisfaction of the officers and stockholders of the
Company, to the satisfaction of Congress, of the best railroad capitalists
and engineers of the Atlantic States, and especially to the satisfaction
of the public, who were gratified at learning that "a practicable route
had been found over the dreaded Sierras. But .Mr. Robinson is not sat-
isfied, and we are not surprised at it.

STOCKHOLDERS AND CAPITALISTS ARE SATISFIED.

The stockholders of this Company, some of whom have invested large
sums in the enterprise, and Eastern capitalists have not hesitated to take
hold, of the work, confident that the route is not only entirely practica-
ble, but a remarkably good one for such a mountainous region. These
men are acting upon a thorough knowledge of the facts, hut Mr. Robin-
son, without that knowledge, and upon very slight information, ex-
presses his dissatisfaction with the surveys made by this Company,
which include the only thorough instrumental railroad survey ever made
over the Sierra Nevada mountains to the valleys beyond, all others be-
ing only limited in their extent. He admits the fact of this survey hav-
ing been made, for he says he "examined the stakes along the line," but
he seems to have been appalled by the "physical obstacles" to be en-
countered. Then let him stand aside for those not so easily frightened.
It is not surprising that one whose practical railroad experience has
been confined to a road over a level plain, should not befitted to encoun-
ter rugged rocks and hills.

CHALLENGE MET AND REFUTED.

But he goes further, and challenges the production of any field notes,
plans or estimates, upon which Mr. Judah's reports were made. If he
means by this to say that there are none, then he asserts another false-
hood. He, of course, writes without any personal knowledge, for he has
never stepped foot inside of our Engineer's office. But the field notes,
maps, plans, profiles and estimates, not only of that first survey by Mr.
Judah, but of several other surveys, are there carefully preserved, and
can be examined by any gentleman who may be interested in the
matter.

FALSE STATEMENTS TO GOVERNOR NYE.

In this connection I will state that one of your United States Senators?
Governor Nye, when on his way to Washington, called at this office and
stated that he had been told that this Company had made no survey
over the mountains. It afforded us a great pleasure to exhibit to him all
the original notes of that survey, with the maps and profiles prepared
under Mr. Judah's direction. He declared, that he was perfectly satis-
fied, and in strong language expressed bis contempt for men who could
fabricate and circulate such base falsehoods.

ROBINSON DON'T LIKE THE ESTIMATES.

He also finds fault with Mr. Judah's estimates of the cost of the work.
The latter had the means of making the estimates, while the former
knows nothing about it. His main- point is that, as the road passes over
a summit seven thousand feet high, greatly exceeding that of any other
railroad in the United States, its cost must be proportionably great. In

136

this he shows his ignorance of engineering. The altitude of the sum-
mit affects the grade of a road, but not necessarily its cost. If the
slope of the Sierras was a uniform plane from the base to the sum-
mit, while the grade would be heavy, the cost of construction would
be no greater than over a plain surface in the valley. It is the
irregularities of the surface and the presence of rock which makes
a railroad expensive, and these may exist as well in a valley as on
a mountain side. The slopes of the Sierras are rough and rocky,
and therefore the work upon that portion of the Pacific Eailroad
located over it, is expensive — but the total rise and fall in ascending to
the summit of seven thousand feet, and descending to the valleys be-
yond, is only eight thousand eight hundred feet, while the Baltimore and
Ohio .Railroad, in surmounting a summit elevation of only two thousand
seven hundred feet, rises and falls seven thousand feet. This difference
is due to the fact that there is very little undulatory grade upon the
Central Pacific line.

HIS ESTIMATES FALSE.

Mr. Eobinson, in saying that the Central Pacific Eailroad will cost
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to three hundred thousand dol-
lars per mile,' states what is not true, and is speaking of a matter respect-
ing which he has no knowledge and no reliable information. His state-
ments of the points where the greatest expense will be incurred, betray
hi?, gross ignorance of the whole matter. Thus, he says, that the most
expensive part of the line is from the summit to the Truckee Eiver,
while, with the exception of jibout one mile, immediately at the summit,
no extraordinary difficulties are met with on that part of the route.

judah's estimates correct.

When Mr. Judah estimated the work at about ninety thousand dollars
per mile, he came near the truth, as he had the data from which to make
his calculations. The recent surveys (which have been more full and
accurate than the first made), as well as the known cost of the work
already completed, confirm the accuracy of the original estimates of Mr.
Judah, and any increase in the expense is accounted for in the increased
cost of material and labor, caused by the war and other unanticipated
events.

FALSE STATEMENT OF COST OF RAILROADS.

He attaches to his letter a statement of the cost of several Eastern
railroads. He does not state the source from whence he made that com-
pilation, but the tables in the office of this Company show that his state-
ment is grossly incorrect. Thus, he states that the cost of the Boston
and Worcester, the Eastern and the Great Western Railroads each at
one hundred thousand dollars per mile, while the tables show that the
first cost sixty-four thousand six hundred and fifty-nine dollars, the
second fifty-five thousand six hundred and fifty-nine dollars, and the third
twenty-three thousand one hundred and fifty-one dollars. A man who
can thus wilfully falsify well known facts, is unworthy of belief in any
Of his statements. It is equally untrue that the cost of labor and mate-
rial in California is double that of the Atlantic States. The object of
these gross misstatements is obviously to prove that it is impossible, with

137

any reasonable outlay of time and money, to build any railroad over the
mountains, for it is evident that the cost over any other route would be
as great, if not greater.

Robinson's motives.

I can well understand why he is anxious to have the Pacific Railroad
appear impracticable. He is the holder of a large amount of the stock
of the Sacramento Valley Railroad, a road which probably would not sell
to-day for the amount of the incumbrances upon it. And the construc-
tion of the Pacific Railroad, or even its extension twelve miles east of its
present terminus, will so divert the trade from that road, that it will
hardly pay necessary expenses. It is his interest, therefore, to delay as
much as possible the construction of the National Railroad, that he and
his friends may retain the monopoly of the Nevada trade. To accom-
plish this he hesitates not to villify the dead as well as the living, to fal-
sify the most notorious facts, and to scatter broadcast the most slander-
ous articles. He hopes thus to induce legislation injurious to the national
work, and prevent capitalists from investing their means in the greatest
enterprise of the age. Indeed, he has the audacity in this very letter to
advise the Legislature of Nevada to adopt a policy, which hu admits will
"hurt" the Central Pacific Railroad, a part of the nation's great high-
way.

DETERMINATION TO BUILD THE ROAD.

But, as has already been shown, his statements as to the impractica-
bility of the route adopted for the Pacific Railroad, are not entitled to
the least weight. I assure you and the people of Nevada, who are so
deeply interested in this question, that it is entirely practicable, and that,
too, without requiring any exorbitant outlay of mone)r. The time re-
quired to complete it will depend upon the means within the control of
the company, and its ability to procure money upon its securities. Our
enemies are laboring hard, utterly reckless of means employed, to pre-
vent us from obtaining money; and if the Legislature of Nevada should
see fit to aid them in their schemes, and indorse their policy, it may pos-
sibly result in delaying the completion of the national road. But what-
ever course may be adopted by others, the public may rest assured that
this company intend to build the road, and that too as speedily as possi-
ble with the means they can command. Men who openly declare such
a road impracticable, will, of course, never seriously attempt it. Con-
vinced, as we are, of its entire feasibility, we shall devote all our ener-
gies to the work.

WAGON ROAD FALSEHOOD DENIED.

He tells you the wagon road ruled the location of the railroad, a charge
I most emphatically deny. In making this charge, he again betrays his
ignorance of facts, for the wagon road was not commenced, nor the
wagon road company organized, until long after the railroad was located.
It was constructed because it was necessary for the railroad. Without
it the railroad, until completed, could only have done a local business.
With it, it is already fully prepared to compete successfully for the
Washoe trade.

138

FALSEHOODS ABOUT SURVEYS EXPOSED1

He says that this company has no located survey beyond Illinoistown,
and refers to Rogers' Report to confirm this charge. That statement is
false, as is nearly every statement in that report of Rogers'. Robinson,
indeed, admits its falsity, by telling you he has examined the stakes.
But he charges that the company " found the work so heavy they dare
not make public the results of the location." In this, he again states a
falsehood, for the results of the survey were published to the world in
the report of our Acting Chief Engineer, S. S. Montague, Esq., made on
the eighth day of October last, copies of which we sent your committee.
It will be found fully set forth on pages thirteen to sixteen of that re-
port.

Mr. Robinson says he knows that Mr. Judah "never even rode over
the Placerville routes." I am informed by one who is well acquainted
with all his explorations in the mountains, that this is not true; that Mr.
Judah did go over that route, and took the altitudes with an aneroid
barometer; but of this I have no present knowledge. The reason this
company never surveyed that route was because Mr. Judah stated that
from his observations, and the reports of Goddard and other engineers,
he was satisfied that it was impracticable for a railroad, and that it was
useless to expend time and money in making a survey. As stated in our
former letter to your* committee, " persons interested in that line pro-
mised to furnish the companj?- with full information respecting it, but
never did so." Having failed to furnish this information, we presumed
they were satisfied of its impracticability.

LOCATION OF ROUTE TO REESE RIVER.

He tells you that the Pacific Railroad route runs north of Reese River.
Mistake again. No location has yet been made of the line east of the
Big Bend of the Truckee. If the route by way of Reese River is found
to be favorable for a raiiroad, it will undoubtedly be adopted, and there
will not be the least difficulty in taking that route from the present ter-
minus of the location.

CENTRAL PACIFIC ROUTE THE SHORTEST AND BEST.

He says that Illinoistown is not as near Virginia as Latrobe. Here
he is again mistaken, as a glance at any map will show; that is, if any
map can be found with Latrope correctly marked on it. • The stages are
daily disproving it, for last summer they made the trip from Newcastle,
twenty-three miles west of Illinoistown, to Virginia, in from four to six
hours less time than those from Latrobe, and during the winter it has
been made most of the time in about twenty-four hours less staging.

Numerous other falsehoods and misstatements might be pointed out
in this, in some respects, remarkable letter, but I deem it unnecessary.
Enough has been shown to determine its character, and a more full ex-
amination would only weary your patience.

In conclusion, I would state that this company opposes no railroad en-
terprise on this coast, but, on the contrary, seeks to be friendly with all.
We regard Nevada as affording one of the best markets for the agricul-
tural productions and manufactures of California, and the Pacific Rail-
road will afford the facilities imperiously demanded by that trade.

139

Every railroad built in California, by cheapening the cost of transporta-
tion of property, lessens its cost, and enables your people to purchase
more largely. In that way every railroad constructed is a benefit to the
Pacific Eailroad. Even the Latrobe Eailroad will, without doubt, ulti-
mately become a feeder to it.

LELAND STANFOED,

Pres't C. P. E. E. Co.

)\
' STATEMENT OE QHAELES CEOCKEE:

In addition to the foregoing reply, I will add that Mr. Judah, in his
lifetime, exhibited to me a letter from L. L. Eobinson to him, in which
he, Eobinson, stated that unless the Central Pacific Eailroad Company
purchased his interest in the Sacramento Valley Eailroad upon his own
terms, which he fixed at an extravagant price, that he would throw
every obstacle in our way that he could ; that he, Judah, was well aware
of the difficulties in the way of building railroads in California, with no
opposition, and all interests favorable to it, but with the active opposi-
tion of his company, wielding a money influence of thirty thousand
dollars per month, we could not hope to succeed ; and that he, Eobinson,
would wield that influence with all his power and energy against the
company, both here and at the East, unless they complied with his terms.
The company did not purchase his interest, and he has been fulfilling his
threat ever since, and has done his utmost, hesitating at no means which
he thought would accomplish his object.

CHAS. CEOCKEE.

A. IN" SWER

L. L. ROBINSON, o.E.

TO THE

LETTER OF LELAND STANFORD.

ANSWER OF L, L ROBINSON TO LELAND STANFORD.

Sacramento, February 23d, 1865.

To the Hon. Charles A. Sumner and Henry Epstein,

Chairmen Committees on Railroads, Nevada Legislature :

Gentlemen — I suppose the recent pamphlet published by Leland Stan-
ford, in his official capacity as President of the Central Pacific Pailroad
Company, calls for an answer; and although I have other matters to
attend to, of more importance than this, still, as your committee pub-
lished my first letter, I answer the pamphlet, seriatim.

"ROBINSON THE ENEMY OP JUDAH."

It may be so, but, if so, I know it not; nor did my brother, J. P.
Robinson, with whom Mr. Judah conferred freely and confidentially
previous to his dissolving his connection with the Company, — and in fact
but for the advice personal, of my brother to Judah, he would have left
the service of the Company much poorer than he entered. So fas as my
railroad knowledge of him extended, it was long and intimate. I never
built a railroad in Florida; although Mr. Judah, through his brother,
became interested in one there, and in one of my various visits to
Europe, I took with me his memoranda, to endeavor to induce English
capital to undertake it. I never charged him anything for my trouble
or expenses. The enterprise did not succeed, and I never until now
learned that Mr. Judah had other than grateful feelings to me for the
part I took in it. I was his choice to undertake the negotiations, and
did not succeed, and the road was never built.

"JUDAH RECOMMENDED THE ROUTE."

When Mr. Judah undertook the first exploration across the mountains
he was in our employ, and we paid him for his services, and so knew as
much as could be known of his discoveries. His explorations developed
the fact, that a railroad could be built across the mountains, — nothing
more; and while his plans, estimates and profile, "constructed" from his
examinations, were being made out, (which he took to Washington when
he procured the franchise.) I was*frequently in his office and saw them of-
ten, and knew well how they were " constructed " or " projected." I also
know further, that after he returned to California, subsequent to the pro-

143

curement of the franchise, he was unwilling to locate the road where it now
is. In fact, when the Board did fix the location so as to accomodate the
wagon road, Mr. Judah was forced to change his line of survey from its
original projection, crossing the California Central Railroad near Lincoln,
to the present crossing at Roseville. Mr. Huntington and Mr. Marsh —
so Mr. Marsh informed me — personally explored, or rather went through,
the Feather River route. -Mr. Judah favored that route, and Mr. Hun-
tington opposed it. Mr. Huntington carried his point, and the road is
located on its present impracticable route.

I am under the impression, from good sources, that no other route was
ever examined by any of the directors in company with Mr. Judah.
How many were examined by "several of the Directors," not in com-
pany with Mr. Judah, I am unable to say; but as all the Directors of
the Central Pacific Railroad and the owners of Dutch Flat Wagon Road
are, by education and practice, civil engineers of high standing, their
explorations and examinations must have been of a most highly scien-
tific and satisfactory character. Had their scientific researches been
published to the world, the result would doubtless have been conclusive
in all things, and no question could possibly have ever arisen afterwards
as to the " best route ;" for who can doubt that men of such large
mathematical attainments could be mistaken. Perhaps Mr. Stanford
will publish to an ignorant and deluded people the result of these extra-
ordinary explorations, which were so thorough and convincing that they
determined the fact of but one route across the Sierras, and that via
Dutch Flat Wagon Road. I fully agree, that after such thorough exam-
ination as these gentlemen must have given to the numerous routes
across the Sierras, and their convincing report upon this simple question,
there was just cause for unanimity in the Board on the location. It is,
of course, not for a moment to be supposed that the Directors who
located the road with so much unanimity could for an instant be swayed
by their ownership of the wagon road. They must have acted entirely
from the scientific reports of " several of the Directors," based upon
their personal examination of that, and the various other routes men-
tioned in Mr. Judah's report.

" HIS REPORTS PROVE IT."

I simply state they do no such thing. "His reasons given," if they
were true, were unanswerable ; but I again repeat that neither his ex-
plorations nor surveys were brought in competition with any other
route, and so far as his thirty reasons published were concerned, I am
willing to grant the correctness of them as a general proposition con-
nected with any route across the mountains, but am not willing to grant,
nor can I anywhere discern in the thirty reasons, any comparison with
any other route.

"ROBINSON CHARGES JUDAH WITH FRAUD."

I cannot coincide' in this view of the case, for 1 make no such charges.
Mr. Judah simply protected himself, well knowing that under the wagon
road management he could earn neither credit, money, nor fame. He
took the only course left him; which was, as the Central Pacific Rail-
road had become a private, close corporation, used for personal ends, and
located for personal ends and gain, to make the most he could out of it

144

and leave the service of the men who controlled it. I feel well assured,
had Mr. Judah had his own engineering way in the matter, he would
never have rested until he had found the best route, and built up for himself
a name and reputation which should last as long as the work he was
engaged upon.

" HE CHARGES HIM WITH CORRUPTION."

I simply state the fact, that Mr. Judah left in his will one hundred
thousand dollars of first mortgage bonds of the Company ; or rather he
left fifty thousand dollars in bonds and a bond from Charles Crocker &
Co. for fifty thousand dollars more in bonds, payable when the first fifty
of the road is opened. I do not think his will, as probated, exhibits miles
any stock as among his assets.

" CHARGE OF BRIBERY DENIED."

That the Company should pay him liberally for his services was just
and proper; for to Mr. Judah is due the present progress of this great
work, and it is much to be regretted that his labor, talents, and energy,
should have been so wasted as it is by the wagon road location. I feel
fully convinced that no entry can be found on the books of the Company
(whatever else may be found there,) of a payment to Mr. Judah of
one hundred thousand dollars of bonds. Perhaps the Company can
state how it is, that their sole contractor should owe Mr. Judah so much
money as to give him one hundred thousand dollars of bonds, or give a
hond for even fifty thousand dollars of first mortgage bonds. Mr. Stan-
ford states that Mr. Judah continued as Chief Engineer of the Com-
pany up to his death. If this statement is correct, I can only say,
Mr. Huntington is placed in an unpleasant position, as I saw his letters
in New York stating just the reverse ; and Mr. Holmes, Street Commis-
sioner and Trustee of the city of Sacramento, told me but a short time
since that Mr. Huntington had given him the same information. I am
under the impression that there is some diversity of opinion as to this
emphatic statement of Mr. Stanford.

"ROBINSON NOT SATISFIED WITH THE SURVEY."

I must differ in opinion as to my not paying anything on account of
of the surveys, etc. The Sacramento Valley Railroad Company paid
for the original explorations made by Mr. Judah, upon which his first
report was based, and I, with others interested in that Company, and
property in California, have certainly been made to pay roundly in in-
creased taxes, not only for surveys, but for work on the road at enormous
prices. Contributing as I do to the Central Pacific Railroad, although not
a stockholder, I have a right to find fault if my money is wasted in
extravagant contracts, large bonuses, bribery in elections, and construc-
tion of wagon roads to benefit individuals. If the result of careful
locating surveys developed the fact that the Dutch Flat Wagon Eoad
was the best route, I should be thoroughly satisfied. I simply state that
no such surveys were ever made, and that when made the fact will be
developed that the Dutch Flat route is the worst route, and is in fact
impracticable ; and that the road cannot be built across the mountains
on that route with the maximum grades of one hundred and sixteen feet
per mile, as limited by Congress.

145

" STOCKHOLDERS AND CAPITALISTS SATISFIED."

I am under the impression that many stockholders are not satisfied.
Even the Directors themselves (see Eogers' Eeport) have deemed it bo
good an investment, that they have forgotten to pay for their subscrip-
tions; If it is so good a thing, why do they not pay up in full ; and why,
if it is so good a thing, do the Company issue mortgage after mortgage and
force counties and cities into furnishing money for them to expend? I am
strongly of the opinion that one need not go far from Sacramento to find
stockholders who are not satisfied. So far as capitalists are concerned,
they are doubtless satisfied so long as they can get first mortgage bonds
guaranteed by the State at one dollars and twenty-five cents in green-
backs. I am informed that the stockholders who have apparently
invested the lai'gest sums in this enterprise have done it through com-
missions and contracts. I have yet to learn of a single stockholder in
the East who subscribed to any considerable amount and paid his install-
ments in money. I am aware that several persons are heavy stockholders,
but am also aware that those who paid money for it would be glad to get
back half of it, and those who took stock for commissions, contracts and
bonuses, would sell at less rate. I do admit a survey was made from
Illinoistown to Dutch Flat (see Eogers' Eeport) ; the Company them-
selves state none had been made.

" CHALLENGE MET AND REPUTED."

I again reiterate my statement and challenge, that Mr. Judah, nor no
other person or engineer in employ of the Company, ever made a loca-
ting survey across the mountains; and also reiterate the statement that
Mr. Judah's plans were "constructed" or "projected," and that there
has never been but one survey made over the mountains by the Com-
pany, which was a mere instrumental reconnoissance, and that no reliance
can be placed upon it for estimates or for grades.

" FALSE STATEMENTS TO GOVEROR NYE."

This is a very imposing heading indeed, and one would suppose it
meant something. So far as I am concerned, I can only say, I am not
that " somebody" who told Governor Nye that this Company had made
no survey over the mountains. I have no doubt but Governor Nye must
have been very much enlightened by an exhibit "to him of all the origi-
nal notes of that survey, with the maps and profiles prepared under Mr.
Judah's direction " — particularly as "field notes" are such lucid exhibits
that he who runs may read ! The thousands of calculations and masses
of notes which should appertain to a locating survey across the moun-
tains are bo easily understood, that Governor Nye could doubtless at a
glance tell all about them? Perhaps " several of the Directors" had
become so au fait with such matters during their explorations that they
could explain them fully and clearly? But from my knowledge of an
engineer's "field notes," I defy Governor Nye or any other man, not
an expert, to understand them; even with an expert it would be trouble-
some. So far as the gentleman in question whose name is so conspicu-
ously paraded is concerned [Governor Nye], I can only say I never spoke
to him but once in my life, and that was the evening previous to his
eaving for Washington.
19a

146

"ROBINSON DON'T LIKE THE ESTIMATES."

I certainly do not, for I know how such estimates are made.
Twenty-five years connection with public works as an engineer and con-
tractor has learned me something about Such matters. If Mr. Judah's
estimates of cost and revenues of Sacramento Valley Railroad, which
was built under his engineer's reports and estimates, are to be taken
as a fair basis of comparison, I should say the Central Pacific Eailroad
would cost five hundred thousand dollars a mile.

The clearness with which the engineering statement is made, that
" the altitude of the summit affects the ? grade ' of a road, but not neces-
sarily its cost," would lead me to suppose that "several of the Directors"
must have written it. I concede the statement; but it is, without ex-
ception, a most extraordinary coincidence in cost of public works, that
the higher the summit, the more expensive the work necessary to reach
it, for nature, in her wisdom, has seen fit to so arrange mountains that the
higher their summits the more extensive the drainage, and the more
broken and difficult the approach to the summit. I am a little astonished
at the admission, that " the elopes of the Sierras are rough and rocky."
The ingenious mode of putting the comparative statement of the total
rise and fall of seven thousand feet in the Sierras against seven thousand
feet on the Baltimore and Ohio Eailroad, is worthy of high praise, and
must have emanated from " several of the Directors." A plain statement
would read : " The Central Pacific Railroad rises to summit seven thou-
sand feet, and there is no fall about it. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
rises three thousand five hundred feet to summit, and falls three thou-
sand five hundred feet to base of mountains; hence it is half as high as,
summit of the Sierras. The truth is, the grades on the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad undulate very materially. On the Central Pacific Railroad they
are all ascending from base to summit. The statement is very ingenious,
but is not frank.

"HIS ESTIMATES FALSE."

I state the road will cost two hundred and fifty thousand to three
hundred thousand dollars per mile. Mr. Stanford says it is not true that
such will be the cost. My information is as good as his. Perhaps "sev-
eral of the Directors" have made an estimate as his guide ? If so, 1
will yield the point, for who can gainsay an estimate based upon such
genius ? But it is right and proper that if such is the fact, the informa-
tion should not be enjoyed by him alone. In a few words: the distance
is about one hundred and forty miles to State line. The Company, at its

last annual meeting increased their capital stock $20,000,000

Their first mortgage, taking precedence of Government, in

round numbers $48,000 per mile, or say 6,000,000

The Government bonds amount to say 6,000,000

The State Aid Bill 1,500,000

San Francisco County 400,000

$33,900,000
Or, in round numbers, two hundred and forty thousand dollars a mile.
If the road is so straight, so level, so cheap, and costs so little, why pro-
vide on paper such vast sums? If the estimate of eighty thousand
dollars per mile is correct, it would require only about one third of this
vast sum.

147

Lot us examine into this matter a little, as to business of road neces-
sary to pay dividends on such vast sums. To pay seven per cent on say
thirty-four millions dollars, would take a net profit of two millions three
hundred and eighty thousand dollars; or estimating expense at sixty
per cent, of gross receipts, which will certainly be as low as it can be
be done, will take a business of approximate six millions of dollar a
year. This is equal to a business of about forty-five thousand dollars
per mile per year. A reference to earnings of the roads in the United
States which have the largest gross earnings per mile per year — many
of them double track, with a dense local population and economical in
working, with a vast passenger trafhe — shows as follows, to wit:

Boston and Lowell, Mass

Baltimore and Ohio, Maryland

Washington Branch

Eastern .Railroad, Maine

Boston and Worcester, Mass

Fitchburg, Mass

New Jersey, New Jersey

Buffalo and State Line, New York

Hudson River, New York

Central, New York

Erie, New York

Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio

Cleveland, Painsville and Ashtabula, Ohio

Little Miami, Ohio

Delaware, Lackawanna, Western Eailroad, Pennsylvania and

New Jersey

Erie and North East, Penn

Pennsylvania, Penn

Reading, Penn

Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey

Camden and Amboy, New Jersey

Terre Haute and Richmond, Indiana

Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, Illinois

Galena and Chicago, Illinois

Sacramento Yalloy Railroad, California

San Francisco and San Jose Road, California

$17,500
13,750
15,500
11,000
17,500
8,000
38,000
25,000
25,000
23,000
20,000
11,000
21,500
23,500

15,500

23,000

14,000

31,500

26,500

32,000

10,000

9,000

8,500

12,500

7,500

" FALSE ESTIMATE OP COST OF RAILROADS.'

Mr. Stanford, in making statement that my table of cost of railroads
Was incorrect, and in quoting from records in their office, must have had
the aid of " several of the Directors," who are such thorough engineers
as to determine at a glance the best route across the mountains. Out of
a list of over twenty railroads given by me, he has picked out the fol-
lowing as erroneous, to wit :

" Boston and Worcester/' my statement is one hundred thousand dol-
lars : Stanford's statement is sixty-four thousand six hundred and fifty-
nine dollars. " Eastern," my statement is one hundred thousand dollars ;
Stanford's statement is fifty-five thousand six hundred and fifty-nine.
" Great Western," my statement is one hundred thousand dollars; Stan-

148

ford's statement is twenty-three thousand one hundred and fifty-one dol-
lars. Let us examine statistics (see Railroad Journal) :

"Boston and Worcester," forty-four and six tenths miles long, cost
four million five hundred thousand dollars — per mile one hundred thou-
sand eight hundred and ninety-six dollars.

"Eastern," forty-four and two tenths miles long, cost four millions
eight hundred and ninety-four thousand one hundred dollars — per mile
one hundred and tfn thousand seven hundred and twenty-seven dollars.

" Great Western,'' two hundred and twenty-nine miles long, cost
twenty-six millions eighty-four thousand one hundred and eighty dollars
— per mile one hundred and thirteen thousand nine hundred dollars.

Perhaps Mr. Stanford will come again to the charge that my state-
ments are false.

The actual figures are as follows :

" Boston and Worcester," total cost, four millions five hundred thou-
sand dollars. All capital stock. No debt.

" Eastern Railroad," capital stock three millions. Mortgage debt, one
million eight hundred and thirty-seven thousand six hundred dollars.
Floating debt, fifty-six thousand five hundred dollars, or a total of four
millions eight hundred and ninety-four thousand one hundred dollars.

"Great Western," capital stock sixteen millions eight hundred and
two thousand seven hundred and forty-five dollars. Mortgage, nine mil-
lions two hundred and eighty-one thousand four hundred and thirty-five
dollars. Total, twenty-six millions eighty-four thousand one hundred
and eighty dollars.

If Mr. Stanford's statements about other matters connected with rail-
roads are no nearer the truth than his statement of cost, as above, even
his " capitalists and satisfied stockholders" will question the reliability
of his statements.

" robinson's motives."

Mr. Stanford certainly merits the thanks of the community for opening
their eyes to my motives. I think 1 stated nry position clearly to the
Committee on the question of a Pacific Railroad. The little railroad in
which I am interested is fully able to take care of itself; and as we do
not levy contributions on the entire community for our support, no one
has any right or reason to trouble themselves about our business or ex-
penses. We have built our own road, paid for it, work it to suit our-
selves. If we lose money on it, it is our loss and not that of the public.
It has never paid anything to the stockholders so far, and if it never
does, certainly no one but a stockholder can find fault.

" DETERMINATION TO BUILD THE ROAD."

Words are cheap and easy to coin. I am frank to say, so far wonder-
ful genius has been displayed in levying contributions upon all interests
and everybody, and I only regret that the same genius had not been
shown in selecting a route across the mountains instead of dwarfing such
a great project to run it into a wagon road.

" WAGON ROAD EAL8EHOOD DENIED."

It is a well known fact that the wagon road is the private property of
the Directors of the Central Pacific Railroad. As to precise dates I am.

149

unable to know, but Mr. Judah's first explorations were for a wagon
road ; and when he thought he had a good wagon road route, the rail-
road was dwarfed into a wagon road feeder. It will never be anything
else, notwithstanding the strenuous statement of determination to build
it, etc., etc.

"falsehoods about surveys exposed."

I again repeat that the Company have no locating surveys across the
mountains to State line, and that they have made a locating survey to
Dutcb Flat. They stated to Eogers (see his Eeport) that they made
none. I stated they had made one. Mr. Stanford acknowledges they
have made one. Mr. Eogers swears they told him they had not. I
simply stated what Mr. Stanford now acknowledges to be the fact. 1
again repeat, Mr. Judah never made any examination of the Placerville
route ; never even rode over it for that purpose ; never rode over it at
all, until just previous to his last departure for the East, when he passed
over it in a stage coach on a pass furnished him by Mr. McLane.

The reasons given by Mr. Stanford why the Company never surveyed
the route may be very conclusive to him, but as Mr. Judah's observa-
tions could not have been made en personne, perhaps " several of the
Directors" explored it and settled it to the satisfaction of the owners
of the Dutch Flat Wagon Eoad. The closing statement (" that persona
interested in that line promised to furnish the Company with full infor-
mation respecting it, but never did so; and that having failed to furnish
this information, we presumed they were satisfied of its impracticabil-
ity,") is very rich indeed. There is a species of quiet humor in it that
is worthy the gentlemen who built the wagon road. A great national
work, crossing the heaviest chain of mountains on this continent, where
millions upon millions must be expended — a work requiring the greatest
possible amount of engineering research and ability — a work which de-
manded that the best possible route should be found, as the very best ia
bad enough — a work which encounters physical obstacles such as are
encountered upon no other work in the world : Is it possible that the
location of such a work was fixed " because persons who promised to
furnish information never did so?" Are the Central Pacific Eailroad
Company not convicted out of their own mouths ? Is not such a state-
ment sufficient to convince even the warmest friend of the great Pacific
Eailroad that this end of it has been dwarfed and strangled to benefit a
few men through a wagon road ? Was ever such a statement published
before ? I feel confident that no more need be said upon the causes
which led to so grave a decision as the location of the greatest work of
the age across a range of mountains where the heaviest physical obsta-
cles are to be encountered. It is sufficient to say that they located it
by Dutch Flat Wagon Eoad because "several of the Directors" explored
other routes, and somebody promised to furnish them information about
some other route who " never did so."

" LOCATION OP ROUTE TO REESE RIVER."

I acrain reiterate my statement that the present location of the Cen-
tral Pacific Eailroad must carry it so far to the north that it will be ex-
ceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to reach Eeese Eiver or Austin, and
that the two routes will not converge until a point far east of Eeese
Eiver is reached.

150

"CENTRAL PACIFIC ROUTE THE SHORTEST AND BEST."

The bare statement is not carried out by facts. I again repeat my
statement that Latrobe is as near Virginia City b}r any traveled route as
Illinoistown. So far as stages are concerned, I leave the question of
time to the two companies engaged in it. I simply know that the facta
of the case are directly the reverse. During the winter, for many (Jaya
at a time, no connection has been made at all via Dutch Flat route,
whereas via Placerville but two connections have failed. I further know
that the stage passengers from Sacramento or San Francisco to Virginia
always have reached their destination in advance of the other route.
Unless the agents at Virginia City daily state an untruth, it has been
without an exception the case, that the up travel has reached Virginia
in advance of the Dutch Flat route ; and so far as down travel is con-
cerned, there have been so many times during this winter when no con-
nection has been made for several days at a timeyi'a Dutch Flat, that all
our interest in their arrival or departure has ceased.

" STATEMENT OF CHARLES CROCKER."

Mr. Crocker takes pains to state that be saw a letter from me to Mr.
Judah about the sale of the Sacramento Valley Railroad to the Central
Pacific Railroad. As he does not state the facts of the case, I will. Not-
withstanding what Mr. Stanford calls the bitter enmity existing between
Judah and myself, we had considerable correspondence over the matter,
the result of which was, that I proposed to try and bring about a sale of
the Auburn road to that compan}' at its actual cost, taking pay in stock
and bonds, and the sale of the Sacramento Valley Eailroad, also, to them,
at a valuation, taking pay also in stock and bonds, when the Central
Pacific Railroad was placed bej-ond the penalties of forfeiture. This
would enable the company to choose the best route over the mountains
— give them a large revenue, and if that route proved the best, they
could commence their work thirty-five miles out from Sacramento, and
so harmonize all interests. I stated at the time, what he well knew
would be the case, that if the Central Pacific Railroad totally ignored
all present vested interests, and run rival to them, that opposition might
be expected — that I was much in favor of a Pacific Railroad, and did
not wish to see anything placed in the way of its progress, as it would
expedite the construction of the road to avail themselves of the present-
roads constructed, and all interests would harmonize in pushing the work
ahead over the mountains. Mr. Judah was in favor of it, and notwith-
standing a publication by the Central Pacific Railroad Company of cost
of changing the road (which was not a correct statement,) it would have
been much more to their interest to have taken it than to have built an
independent road. The statement of the actual cost to the Central Pa-
cific Railroad Company, of such consolidation, would have been as
fjllows:

151

First. 40,000 new cross ties, at 70 cents, deducting sale of
old ones at 25 cents — 45

Second. 2,000 tons new rails at $90, deducting $45 for old
rails, etc. — $45

Third. Permanent culverts, etc., on line

Fourth. Bridge across American River. ...

Fifth. New engines and cars (or changing of old ones)

Sixth. Buildings, etc., at Sacramento

Total i

$18,000

90,000
20,000
40,000
35,000
25,000

$228,000

Now to put twenty-two miles of their own road in working order
would cost —

First. The Crocker contract, etc., for eighteen miles, and

four miles additional

Second. The new cross ties on their present line (40,000 at

70 cents)

Third. The new rails on present line (2,000 tons at $90)

Fourth. New engines and cars on present line, (equal to

those on S. V. R. R. at that time

Fifth. Buildings, etc., at Sacramento

Sixth. And for contingencies, etc., on present line ten per

cent, on ahove items, $c83,000

Total cost of first twenty-two miles of Central Pacific;
Railroad, approximation

To reach a point as far removed from Sacramento as the pre-
sent terminus of the Sacramento Valley Railroad at
Folsom.

$500,000

28.000
180,000

150,000
25,000

88,000

$971,000

As to mortgages, etc., the total amount would not have been any-
thing like as much as the present total cost of their road to Newcastle.

The truth is, the company presented to the public a statement as a
justification of their Crocker-contract which was not a correct one; for
I unhesitatingly affirm that the entire road to Auburn station, stocked
and equipped as a first class railroad, would have been very much less
than present cost of their road to Newcastle.

I regret to trouble you with so long a statement, but Mr. Stanford's
assertions are loose; and while a rebuttal of them is not important, still
I wish your committee to know, as far as lays in my power, facts, not
personalities; for it is facts, and physical ones at that, which have to be
encountered in constructing a road across the mountains, and my only
wish now is that the best route across the mountains shall be found and
built upon, regardless of men or interests.

Yery respectfully,

L. L. ROBINSON.

TESTIMONY

:f. a., bee

TESTIMONY OF F. A. BEE.

SWORN BY CHAIRMAN OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE.

Chairman — "Where do you reside?
Answer — In Placerville.
Question — What is your occupation ?

A. — I have been in the telegraph building for some time past, and lat-
terly I have been engaged in constructing railroads.

Q. — Have you any information in regard to railroad matters, in con-
nection with the operations of companies that are, or have been actually
constructing railroads from navigable tide water in the State of Califor-
nia, to or toward the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and on any proposed
route from California navigable waters to this State?
A. — I* think 1 have.
Q. — Please state?

A. — There is the Freeport branch of the Sacramento Valley Railroad,
of which I have information from the President of the company in re-
gard to its construction; the purposes for which it was constructed.
The Freeport was built for two purposes, as I understand from the Pres-
ident of the company, Mr. Bragg. First, to get below the sand bars
that are continually forming in the Sacramento River. Second, to get
rid of opposition or persecution from the interests in Sacramento City
that appeared to be strongly obnoxious to the Sacramento Valley Railroad.
That road is constructed. It is in good running order. It connects, at a
distance of six or seven miles from Sacramento City with the Sacramento
Valle}r Railroad. Near the town of Folsom, a little below the town, a
■i little west, the Placerville and Sacramento Railroad intersects the Sac-
f ramento Valley Railroad. That road, the Placerville road, is constructed
i and in good running order to Latrobe, a distance of fifteen miles from
! Folsom. There is probably six mitas of the road graded from Latrobe,
' east. The iron required (twenty-one hundred tons), is mostly in Latrobe
i and Freeport — all the iron required for the Placerville road. The schoon-
i ers were unloading it two weeks ago, while I was there. The iron wa3
' purchased in England and shipped from England. It was purchased by
; D. N. Barney, of New York, who is a leading railroad man in the East-
! ern States, and interested deeply in the construction of a railroad to the
\ western boundary of this State, and to this point, to Carson. He acted
: as agent of the company in purchasing the iron. The other requisite
j material for the construction of this road is mostly on the ground.

156

Q. — Of what road ? State distinctly.

A. — The Latrobe and Placerville road. The grading will be com-
pleted to Shingle Springs, nine miles from Placerville, by the middle of
next summer, or the middle of next June. That reaches a point, at
Shingle Springs, nine miles distant from Placerville.

Q. — How far is Latrobe from Placerville ?

A. — It is eighteen miles from Latrobe to Placerville.

Q. — How many tons of iron is required for the laying of a mile of rail-
way ?

A. — The iron purchased for this road lays at the rate of one hundred
(100) tons to the mile.

Q. — And there are twenty-one hundred tons of iron on hand owned
by the Placerville and Sacramento Pailroad ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Sufficient to lay twenty-one (21) miles ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — What is the character of the work necessary to be executed be-
tween Shingle Springs and Placerville, as to grading?

A. — Between Shingle Springs and Placerville there is but one heavy
cut. The grading from Shingle Springs on, is, a great portion of it, what
railroad engineers call " side hill cut." I know of no obstacle in the
way, between Shingle Springs and Placerville, preventive of the speedy
completion of this portion of the work.

Q. — What is the grade of the located road (if yon know), from Latrobe
to Placerville, or about the average grade ?

A. — I am not sure as to that. I think it is in the neighborhood of
fortj- (40) feet to the mile.

Q. — At what time is it contemplated that this road will reach Placer-
ville?

A. — In conversation with the Chief Engineer and other officers of the i
company respecting this work, they assured me it was their intention
and expectation to have it completed, at the very latest, by the first of 1
January next; and that opinion was given on the ground that a part of I
the material was on the way here, and the}' could not be certain as to i
the particular day or month on which it would arrive. That is to say,
I understood that there had been a neglect to ship, or reship, a large
amount of "chairs" which had been purchased for the road. The iron
was fully and promptly shipped ; but not a sufficient amount of " chairs."
One of the contractors informed me that he thought the grading could
he finished b}* the first of August.

Mr. Bishop — The grading could be finished by that time?

A. — Yes, sir. The "grading" constitutes the work. The rail can be
laid on the graded road at the rate of a mile a day. They laid the rail
nearly at that rate from Folsom to Latrobe. That is the usual rule of
rate of laying, as calculated by railroad contractors.

Q. — What is your information, if any, and what are, or have been,
your means and modes of obtaining such information, in regard to the
intended construction of a railroad over the Sierra Nevadas, from the
terminus of the Sacramento and Placerville Eailroad? I refer to the
"San Francisco and Washoe Eailroad Company," so called.

A. — My information in regard to the designs of that corporation is in-
formation which I obtained directly from those interested in the construc-
tion of the road. I will, if desired, give you that information. 1 may
be wrong in some particulars; but as to the general outline of what
they propose to do I am posted.

157

Mr. Bishop — Give us the "general outline," then.

A. — Well, Colonel Lewis, once Surveyor General of the State of Cali-
fornia, informed me that parties were in this State (that was in October
last), representing a large amount of available English capital, seeking
investment in railroad enterprises here. He said that they had a com-
pany surveying from Stockton to Deer Creek. TheLatrobe road crosses
Deer Creek a little northwest of Latrobe, a mile or two; that they had
already organized a company and had authorized the survey of the route
from Placerville to the eastern base of the mountains; that competent
parties in Europe had sent their business agents here, two of them, to
procure these survey's, correct and accurate surveys, showing the feasi-
bility or impracticability of the route. I saw, mj'self, one of the parties
of engineers surveying the route this side of Placerville. Mr. Kidder
and Mr. Bishop were of the party.

Mr. Bishop — When was this that you saw the surveyors?

A. — It was in the month of October or November, I don't remember
which.

Q. — Have those parties, to your knowledge, made any regular report
of the survey they were then engaged upon ?

A. — The Chief Engineer informed me that he had, and sent mo a copy
of the survey as reported. He also stated to me that the survey and re-
port were highly satisfactory to the parties who had come out here for
the purpose of obtaining it. He said that they had returned to Liver-
pool, England, for the purpose of laying the facts thus demonstrated be-
fore the capitalists whom they represented. Mr. Latham, who was the
business agent of these gentlemen I know, returned to England with
them. That was what I was told by Mr. Lewis. I was in San Fran-
cisco when they sailed. Since their arrival in Now York I have some
information from them. Whether it would be of any value to the Com-
mittee, or not, I do not know. It is gleaned from a private telegraphic
dispatch which the parties did not wish, certainly, to make wholly
public.

Mr. Bishop — We would like to hear anything that would throw light
on the intentions of the company.

A. — I should have stated at the proper time: In conversation with
Mr. Bishop, the Chief Engineer of the Sacramento and Placerville road,
he stated to me that his orders were from the parties to obtain a correct
and minute survey of the route from Placerville to the eastern base of
the mountains, or to the Nevada State line. He said that he was in-
structed to survey as practicable a line as possible over the summit of
the Sierra Nevadas, and also to report upon the practicability of a tun-
nel route through the summit. Since the survey was ended, Mr. Bishop
has told me that he has complied with these orders and made a most
j complete survey, so much so that contracts could be let and contractors
j go right to work immediately, with the specifications from the survey

I before them.
Mr. Bishop — Well, what was the information conveyed in the tele-
graphic dispatch to which you have alluded?

A. — It is information which I have obtained since I came over here
from Placerville. It is substantially to this effect : That the means to
construct the San Francisco and Washoe Railroad had been secured, and
secured in New York. " Secured in the East/' the dispatch was worded.
Q. — What is your opinion now, as a business man, and familiar with
these railroad routes, and the parties in California interested in them;
what is your opinion and judgment in regard to the intentions of the

158

originators of the company for building this line across the mountains.
And what is your opinion in regard to their responsibility? Do you be-
lieve that the managers of this project are acting in good faith, and that
thejr have, or can command, the means adequate to the undertaking?

A. — From the information which I have obtained in reference to these
parties and their designs, 1 have no doubt of the good faith of the in-
tentions, and the entire responsibility and financial competency of the
parties proposing to build this road. I have no doubt whatever in regard
to these subjects, and I can give the committee the grounds upon which
I base that opinion. It is this: Parties have come out here from Eng-
land, brought special agents representing large capital with them, and
have spent a number of thousands in making the trip and procuring this
survejr. They obtained at great expense, but without hesitation at cost
on their part, the best engineering talent on the coast. I saw, as I
stated, their surveying work, when actually being performed. They
have not seemed to spare any expense in securing quickly a perfect sur-
vey. The organization which now exists, known as the San Francisco
and Washoe Bailroad Company, was formed at the instance of these
parties who design building the road, and who wished to comply at
once with the statutes of California authorizing and granting special
privileges to railroad corporations. They accordingly filed their papers,
maps, etc., in the office of Secretary of State, in Sacramento, California.

Q. — Do you know, of your own knowledge, that these parties of
whom you have spoken, believed to represent large foreign capital and
enterprise, had intimate business consultations and associations, while
here, with prominent business men of California — so generally acknowl-
edged to be ?

A. — I know that they were obtaining information during their stay
here in reference to the trade and travel between California and this
State, and the probable expense of railroad construction, with a view to
construct a railroad over the mountains if the survey proved satisfac-
tory ; and in seeking this information, they associated with leading
business men and capitalists of California.

Mr. Slingerland — Has a survey actually been made by these parties,
or for them, to the California and Nevada State line ?

A. — Most assuredly.

Q. — To what extent has the entire survey been made ?

A. — There is a thorough and minute survey to Placerville from Free-
port ; of course, partly constructed upon. I presume you have all been
in Lake Valle.y ? Well, the survey has been very minute to where the
preliminary surveys diverge in that valley. One survey is by Hope
Valley, and another contemplates a road down to this valley through
Walton Pass. This was a survey made by Mr. Bishop in one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-two. The stakes were driven somewhere
under this mountain near where the Walton Pass comes in. But there
is a working survej' made to the point where this starts, in Lake Valley.

Mr. Bishop — As I understand you, there is a working survey from
Placerville to Lake Valley ?

A. — Yes, sir; a thorough one.

Q. — So that contracts could be made and contractors could go to work
without any additional surveying?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — The survey is so complete as to show the amount of work actually
required to be done, and just where it is to be done ?

A. — Yes, sir. Then there was another survey made in one thousand

159

eight hundred and sixty-two from a point called the State Line, by Mr.
Daj', down into this valley and to within two or three miles of this city.

Mr. James — You say that these parties representing foreign capital in
this proposed enterprise made some investigation in regard to the
amount of goods transported across the mountains?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Do you know anything about the results of that investigation ?

A. — Only from hearsay. 1 understood that they were highly gratified
with the results of that investigation.

Q. — Did you not see some account of the amount of freight gathered
from their examination ?

A. — Yes, sir, I did. But I could not now state the exact amount. I recol-
lect I saw the statement myself. I recollect that the figures were taken
by a Mr. Swan, who is a toll keeper on the main traveled road. Each
wagon that passed within such a period was stopped, and the amount
of freight and freight money ascertained.

Mr. Bishop — That was done for the purpose of finding out what the
profits of the road would be when completed ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — So as to arrive at some conclusion as to what the earnings would
be?

A. — Yes, sir; I spent some two months on the same inquiry in one
thousand eight hundred and sixtj'-three.

Mr. Haskell — How much would it amount to in a year ?

A. — I cannot state the exact amount. It was over eight millions of
dollars.

Mr. Bishop — It amounted to sufficient to "gratify" the parties who
required the examination?

A. — Yes, sir. There was over eight millions of dollars on this one
road.

Q. — That is, for one year?

A. — Yes, sir; there had to be an estimate of the winter trade, aside.
As you probably know, the greater part of the business is done within
eight months. There were seven thousand wagons engaged in the trade,
counting large and small — counting from a fruit wagon to an eight mule
team.

Q. — In regard to this survey that has been recently made from Placer-
ville to the State line, — does that survey start directly and literally from
the western terminus of the Sacramento and Placerville Road ? It has
been reported that the former is six or seven hundred feet higher than
the Sacramento and Placerville Railroad terminus at Placerville.

A. — That is the "initial point."

Q. — Is there, in point of fact, a direct and absolute connection between
the two, so that the cars may run directly on ?

A. — Yes, sir. The stakes for the Latrobe road are stuck on the north
slope of what is called " Hangtovvn Hill." The commencement of the
survey of the Placerville and Washoe Road is within rifle shot of the
stakes driven two years or eighteen months ago by the Latrobe Com-
pany.

Q. — On the same level?

A. — On the same level ; right across the ravine. The first stake is
driven on a lot of my own, and I can look right across the ravine and
see the other stakes.

Mr. James — Then, the road coming to Placerville from Latrobe can
continue right on by the surveyed route to our State line ?

160

A. — Yes, sir, certainly.

Q. — So that the cars coming upon the Latrobe and Placerville Koaci
would run straight on the track made under this last survey by Mr.
Bishop, from Placerville to the State line? That is, it would be a con-
tinuous rail connection ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Mr. Slingerland — You say that the terminus of the Latrobe survey is
on one side of the creek or ravine, and the commencement of the Placer-
ville and Washoe survey is on the other side ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — What manner of connection would there have to be in order to
bring the two roads together, across the creek or ravine?

A. — The Placerville and Sacramento Railroad terminates on the side
of the hill, a little to the west and up from the point on the creek where
the termini of the other is located. In order to make the depots, and
storehouses, and freight houses, at that place, they will have to build a
bridge across the creek which lies between the two surveys. The track
of the Latrobe Railroad would cross this bridge that would have to be
made, over to whe're the Washoe Railroad stakes are stuck. This would
be coming up the ravine, and from the creek, which pitches down in
this manner, (describing by posturing his hands.) You understand that
the stakes of the San Francisco and Washoe Railroad are stuck right
across the creek, up this ravine, near the residence of Mr. Kirk. As the
stakes appear, placed at these points, I do not think that there is (6) six
feet rise between them.

Q. — You could cross precisely upon the same level ?

A — Yes, sir.

Q. — No difficulty whatever in making the connection ?

A. — No, sir, none whatever. I do not think that it is over twenty-five
(25) feet high across there. The same route was located at the same
place some years ago by William J. Lewis — one of the best engineers on
the coast, probably.

Q. — Has there been any work done upon the road east of Placerville?

A. — No, sir ; only the survey.

Q. — What is the estimated time for the completion of the railroad, as
the route is survej^ed, from Placerville to the State line ?

A. — I could not answer that. All I know in connection with that is
what I have learned from parties intimate with those capitalists or capi-
tal agents. They informed me that the policy of those capitalists was
to build the road in the speediest possible manner consistent with thor-
oughness, inasmuch as they were convinced the road would bring them
adequate and large returns.

Q. — You are familiar with the work alreadj^ done on the railroads from
the Sacramento towards the Sierra Nevada, and you are familiar with
the general features of the route over the mountains which it is pro-
posed this road shall travel ?

A. — Yes, sir, very familiar;

Q. — Perhaps, then, you are competent to draw conclusions in your own
judgment as to how long it would require to build this road over this
route. In your opinion, how long would it take to build the road on
this route from Placerville to the Nevada State line?

A. — If I had the requisite capital, and the management of affairs my-
self, I think I could construct it — as, indeed, I think they will construct
it — within a period of five years. That is, by the Summit route, as Mr.
Bishop has surveyed it, to the State line in Lake Valley.

161

Mr. Bishop — What is the distance from Placerville to the State line,
taking the line of survey ?

A. — The road distance from Placerville to the State line, is sixty-eight
miles. I think that the surveyed railroad route is some ninety odd
miles. But I am not positive in my recollection about that. Of course
Mr. Bishop's report will tell you precisely, I believe that from Placer-
ville to the station known as " Friday's," it is sixty-seven miles by the
stage traveled road.

Q. — Then that would be allowing some thirty miles for necessary
curves in the grading of the railroad ?

A. — Yes, sir; I should judge so. But I do not know positively. They
lost some three or four miles of distance in the vicinity of Placerville,
between Weaver Creek and the South Fork of the American.

Q. — From your experience and knowledge, do you think the estimates
made by the surveying engineer, as to the probable cost of the road, are
correct? Do you think that^the road can be built for that amount of
money ?

A. — Really, sir, my own experience in such matters has not been suf-
ficient to enable me to form a competent judgment in the premises. I
do know, however, that the engineer who made that survey is one of
the most cautious of men in all his business and professional calculations.
In fact, I do know that the Sacramento and Placerville road is being
built, so far, for something like two hundred and fifty thousand (250,000)
dollars under his estimate, previously made of the cost of the road. I
understand, also, that there has been a saving in addition, of some forty
thousand dollars, between Latrobe and Shingle Springs, on that section
of the road which is now in process of construction. That is, forty
thousand dollars (140,000) less than was Mr. Bishop's original and re-
ported estimate of the cost of portions of the work, now completed, on
that section. If you will permit me, I will venture to say, that I think
it is a very easy matter, on this route, to get at pretty accurate estimates
of the necessary expense, because there has been more excavation work
executed by the toll road builders, close along this route — one third
more (if j7ou will allow me to judge) than there would be required to
grade a railroad from Placerville to this point. A railroad bed is, as you
will remember, only eight feet in width. Where it runs along the side
of a hill there will be a difference, according to the slope. A toll road is
from sixteen to eighteen feet in width. I think that those of the Com-
mittee who have passed over the route will bear me out in saying, that
there is more excavation up the Johnson Pass, and on the Swan road —
more rock excavation — than would be necessary to execute for a railroad.
The width of the excavation for the toll roads more than balances, I
think, the longer route necessary for a railroad gradation. You will
also bear in mind, in this connection, that in cutting into the side of a
hill for a bed, your labor in excavating increases in large ratio the greater
the width required. To illustrate : You may make a bed eight feet in
width, at a cost in labor and consequent expenditure in money no larger
than would be required in addition in order to widen that same bed of
eight feet to one often. That is to say, the first eight feet of side hill
excavation may actually cost no more than will two additional feet of
widening. This is the case in greater or less proportion on every side
hill route.

Q. — By these excavations for toll road purposes, their cost and the
rapidity of their execution, we can arrive with considerable certainty

20a

162

and accuracy at the cost of the work necessary for grading a railroad
bed on this route ?

A. — I should judge so; clearly, I think the data are very competent.

Q. — Do you know anything about the proposed route for a railroad
over the Sierra Nevada, adopted by the Central Pacific Eailroad
Company ?

A. — I know nothing with reference to it of my own knowledge. The
information which I heard there, at Washington, in regard to that route,
was such as I gained from the Chief Engineer himself, Mr. Judah. Mr.
Judah is now dead.

Q. — What was Mr. Judah's opinion as to the practicability of that
route, as expressed by him in "Washington ?

A. — As far as he had explored, he expressed the utmost confidence in
the route selected by him.

Q. — What are the chief difficulties in the way of a railroad success-
fully constructed and operating across the Sierra Nevada Mountains?

A. — I probably should have stated before, that Mr. Bishop informed
me that the only obstacle which these parties thought there was in the
way of the working of the road, was the "snow belt."

Q. — The working of what road ?

A. — The San Francisco and Washoe Eailroad.

Q. — Who do you mean by " these parties?"

A. — I mean the parties who procured this survey — the foreign capi-
talists or their agents.

Q. — Was that their apprehension before or after making the survey?

A. — Before the survey, and all the time. Mr. Bishop also stated to
me that these parties were favorable to the ultimate undertaking of the
tunnel. They expressed a belief that a tunnel three and three quarters
miles in extent, was no obstacle of insurmountable proportions in labor
and cost, after the road was once constructed, and placed in successful
operation over the Summit route.

Q. — Is it the intention of that Company to first construct the road
over the Summit, and afterward to commence and complete the work
of running the tunnel ?

A. — Afterward, if they think proper from the experience they will
then have had, they propose to construct the tunnel.

Q. — But the proposition is first to build the road over the Summit, and
not to wait the long work of boring the tunnel before actually getting
the cars into the State of Nevada, on a continuous line of railway?

A. — Over the Summit first. Mr. Bishop mentioned to me the reasons
why you cannot at once spend a good deal of money and labor on a tun-
nel,— not from any proportion as to length. But very few hands can
be worked at once. All the men whom you can employ must be at work
at one of the two ends, or in some of the air shafts. When I was East
on telegraph matters, I took a tour through different parts of the United
States, and passed through a number of the largest tunnels. I passed
through a tunnel on the Baltimore and Ohio Eailroad which, 1 think,
is four thousand feet in length — nearly a mile. There was a road once
constructed over the summit, which this cuts off. I went into the Ber-
gen tunnel, which was then not quite completed. That is through hard,
blue rock. I think that is a mile in length, or over a mile. I went
through one tunnel, and over the top of it, on foot. The Bergen tun-
nel is now completed, and trains are running through it. It passes
through the hardest rock that I ever saw in my life; and that is saying
a good deal for a Californian.

163

Mr. Haskell — Do you know anything about the Hoosac tunnel?

A. — Only from hearsay; I came from near there.

Q. — What is your opinion in regard to the snows on this route, as to
their being troublesome ?

A. — I don't think that a train of cars could get over the Placerville
route in the winter months, without some additional guarantee against
the snow. The snow falls from ten to fifteen feet in depth, for a distance
of seven miles on the main plateau on the top of the summit.

Mr. Bishop — From your observation in regard to this matter, do you
think it would be possible to construct a roof over the road on the sum-
mit, so as to protect it against the snow ?

A. — I submitted a plan m}Tself to a convention of railroad men, for a
roofing over the road. I first suppose that a sufficient width for the road
bed is sunk down. On the side hill the cut would present an advantage
of itself for the construction of a roof. But the bed could be sunk down
at most any point, say eight feet. Then a roof could be constructed as
I proposed, eighteen feet in hight, with so sharp a slope as of itself to
furnish nearly sufficient bracing power against the snows, and so steep
that any considerable bodies of snow would slide off from it. It could
be very readily constructed out of cedar. I think it might answer to
construct it simply with a ridge-pole, without any cross bracing.

Q. — Would not the snow, if it should rise over the roof, naturally arch
and become self-sustaining?

A. — That is the case all through the mountains. You frequently see
that illustrated when a tree eight or ten feet high has been covered by
the snow. You will find the tree standing straight up under the snow,
with perhaps no snow near it within from five to ten feet. The heat of
the wood melts the snow awajr from the body and the branches, and
leaves the tree a little winter hot house of its own making. I have fallen
through some of these arches, or snow houses, a distance of ten or twelve
feet. It is the same way on the old log houses that were built in the
mountains. A short time after the snow has fallen and covers the
house, it melts away from the roof and there is no pressure on top at all.
There is an abundance of timber, of course, for the construction of such
a roof, all the way along the summit.

Mr. Rigby — On the line of this road are there any high bluff's where
the snow slides ?

A. — There is only one place where the snow slides. That is known as
the snow slope. It carried away my telegraph poles and line on that
slope at one time; every one of them. The snow at that point comes
down from a very high peak. When the snow starts at that point, it
comes down in a tremendous avalanche. You have been to that point
on the road, I suppose. The survey of this railroad route is on the
opposite side of the snow flat into which this avalanche sometimes
descends. This road is on the south side of the flat; across the ravine.
This avoids the danger of snow to the railroad at that point of the
route.

Q. — What is the fact in regard to the present or prospective help, or
opposition, of toll road owners on this route toward the construction of
the railroad ?

A. — I can only speak from an examination of the books of the Sacra-
mento and Placerville Eailroad Company. On an examination of their
stock books, I found only two toll road owners who held any stock or
had rendered any aid toward the construction of that road. I have
found, by talking with them, that they do not feel much of a liberal or

164

enterprising spirit toward the proposition of a railroad on this route.
The statement that has been current in some newspapers that the toll-
road men on this route constituted the main supporters and advocates of
a railroad on this route, is not true. They might, perhaps, be induced —
some of them — to subscribe toward the building of a railroad to Placer-
ville: but they would not sign for any work beyond that point, on tho
ground that the road would soon leave them in the rear and take away
their income.

Q. — Have any of the hotel keepers along this route shown any favor,
or hostility of disposition, toward this proposed route ?

A. — I could not say as to that. I know that many of the toll road
owners are abundantly able to assist the building of the road from
Placerville; but so far they have refused to take any interest in it. I
don't think they have given any railroad from the Sacramento to the
mountains any support, with the two exceptions I have named.

Mr. James — What is the distance of the snow belt on this summit
which has just been surveyed by Mr. Bishop?

A. — Seven miles. The distance that is now traveled by sleighs over
tho mountains on the Pioneer or Placerville route is eleven miles. There
are seven miles of deep snow on the main plateau.

Mr. Haskell — The railroad would necessarily go up on the side of tho
"summit," which would make it much longer on the snow belt than tho
Btage road ?

A. — Three or four miles from the summit, on which you may find ten
or twelve feet of snow, it is bare ground. That is, 1 mean on the other
or western side. I know it is bare ground in Lake Yalley at times when
the snow is very deep on the summit.

Mr. James — Do you think that without any Government or outside
aid, without an}' other capital than the resources directly at the com-
mand of the Washoe and San Francisco Kailroad Compan}', they intend
and are able to build this road ?

A. — I can give you a portion of the information which I have on this
point, and the source from which it was derived. Mr. Louis McLano
informed 'me that this Company did not intend to open stock books for
subscriptions in the State of California, or in this State, any further than
to comply with the California statute, which requires, I believe, a thou-
sand dollars a mile subscribed, and ten per cent, paid in. The Engineer
told me, that they did not intend to ask for Government aid at present.
And he said that it was not their intention to ask for Government aid
unless they met with some unforeseen difficulties in the way of con-
structing their road — difficulties which were not now visible. The*
Company wanted the right of way guaranteed to them. Perhaps even
this right might not be given without opposition. There was no reason
•why they should not apply to the Government of the United States for
assistance, inasmuch as tho Government had assisted other roads. I
know that this argument is generally used to the reverse.

Q. — You are familiar with the principal parties named in connection
with this proposed road?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Do you know that this company, or any of its officers, or accre-
dited agents, proposed to urge upon Congress, or ask any one else to
urge upon the Congress of the United States, any grants in behalf of their
road?

A. — I do not. 1 have this information from their officers and agents.
'they say that when they shall have built and completed a section of

165

twenty-five miles east of Plaeerville, the receipts and earnings of the
road will go very far toward constructing the balance of the road up to
the foot of the summit. And when they shall have reached a point so
high up as Strawberry, the nettings of the road will build it to comple"
tion. That is their calculation, as the}7 see matters at present. And
they wish and intend to so divert the funds. But they do intend to ask
the Government for land for their protection on a right of way. I waa
told by Engineer Lewis, I don't know whether it is of any importance to
the committee, but it may explain some matters, that these parties who
proposed the construction of this road did not ask, or expect, any action
to be taken by this Legislature, or any other Legislature, or by Congress,
in the way of giving aid to this road until they were fully aware ot the
practicability of this route, and had seen and examined the printed copy
of this survey. They did not wish any action taken before that wa8
seen.

Q. — Referring to the survey that has been laid before us?

A. — Yes, sir, Mr. Bishop's. The one that was then in progress of mak-
ing. I believe that the map and profile has been exhibited to this Legis-
lature. I would like to explain one matter for the benefit of the commit-
tee. I believe that all of the committee have not been over this route.
When we hear so much about mountains that are impossible to pass on
this route by a railroad line, we may "not be told of the natural adapta-
tion of the country for a railroad grade. The South Fork of the Ameri-
can River is within two miles and a half of Plaeerville. This stream fol-
lows down a deep canon from near the summit to the foot hills of the
Sierra Nevada. This survey by Mr. Bishop for the San Francisco and
Washoe Railroad Company reaehed that canon from Plaeerville as soon
as possible. The engineer, in making that survey, got on the upper
ridge of that river canon as soon as possible. The road then follows the
course of the South Fork of the American River, which is an almost due
east course, until it reaches a little below Strawberry. From there the
survey is ninety-five feet to the mile, up the summit. That is the maxi-
mum grade.

Q. — How does that grade compare with the established grades of rail-
roads in the East?

A. — I have traveled over grades in the East of one hundred and
twelve and one hundred and sixteen feet to the mile. I have been over
one grade of one hundred and sixteen feet to the mile extending a dis-
tance of eleven miles. I was in a long train of cars, and it was raining
at the time which made the track slippery. We were drawn up by a
locomotive specially constructed for hauling trains up steep grades. It
had six drivers.

Q. — A grade can, then, be very successfully run which rises at the rate
of one hundred and ten feet to the mile?

A. — Yes, sir, except the snows interfere with it. And that is the fact,
the one only obstacle that is at all formidable in the way of a railroad to
this State by this route is the snow. There is really nothing else of un-
usual magnitude in the way. There are no extraordinary obstacles, for
a mountain road, to prevent the construction of a good road over the
mountains b}7 this route. 1 think it has been established by actual sur-
veys that on this route there are no more formidable obstacles to over-
come in the construction of a railroad than are encountered on the Bal-
timore and Ohio Railroad. I believe that that road has thirty-nine miles
of very heavy grade. There are roads in the East where the grade ia
over two hundred feet to the mile. They are named in some of the re-

166

ports and comparative statistics that have been printed in reports and
eurvej-s of routes over our mountains.

Q. — Is it easier to construct a road by long-side hill excavations than
to make embankments and cuts in an ordinarily undulating country?

A. — Yes, sir. The most expensive railroads, exclusive of the cost of
actually tunneling, are made where there is continuous cutting or filling.

Q. — How much have the citizens of El Dorado subscribed to this road?

A. — The county of El Dorado has subscribed two hundred thousand
dollars to the Placerville and Sacramento Eailroad. The citizens of Pla-
cerville, in their corporate capacity, have subscribed one hundred thou-
eand dollars. I see by the books of the company that one hundred and
forty thousand dollars in stock is held by the citizens of Placerville.
That makes over four hundred thousand dollars.

Q. — That is for the road west of Placerville ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Is the road from Freeport, which connects with the Sacramento
Valley Eailroad, a part of the Placerville and Sacramento Eailroad ?

A. — The agreement with the Messrs. Eobinson and the other officers
of the Sacramento Valley Eailroad was that they would build and keep
in repair a railroad to the deep waiter of the Sacramento Eiver. Sand
bars were continually forming in front of the city of Sacramento. This
was an objection to Sacramento as a terminus. There was talk of run-
ning a road from Placerville to Stockton. This would have diverted the
mountain freight from Sacramento and from the Valley road. I under-
stood that in order to secure a connection with the road to Placerville it
was agreed to build this road to Freeport, and thus secure deep water
wharves at all seasons of the year.

Q. — Is that Freeport road a portion of the Sacramento and Placerville
road ?

A. — I do not know whether it is now or not. I know, or believe,
that there was a proposition to make one road, under one Company,
from Placerville to Freeport. I don't know whether that plan has been
consummated or not. It was not when I left.

Q. — Then does the Freeport branch belong to the Sacramento Valley
Eailroad Company ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — What is the distance by rail from Placerville to Freeport ?

A. — From Freeport to Latrobe there are forty-seven (47) miles of com-
pleted road. By the railroad survey, I think it is nineteen miles from
Latrobe to Placerville. It may be twenty (20.)

Q. — Do I understand that a preliminary survey has been made by way
of Hope Valley ?

A. — Yes, sir. A preliminary survey has been made from the State
line to the north side of Carson Eiver. A portion of it is through Hope
Valley. I think it goes down what is called Desert Canon. I saw the
engineers and conversed with them while they were engaged in making
the survey.

Q. — You were speaking of a road from Lake Valley to Carson Valley?

A. — Yes, sir. I understood from the Chief Engineer that they pro-
posed to survey a route of which he has already some information, called
the " Walker Eoute." He said that he had information to the effect that
it was some thirty miles nearer to Austin by this route.

Mr. Haskell — How much of the Sacramento and Placerville Eailroad
has been completed ?

A. — Fifteen miles; from Folsom to Latrobe.

167

Q. — What stock has that Company for their road ?

A. — They have twenty-one hundred tons of iron on hand; a portion
of it at Freeport and a portion of it at Latrobe. It is calculated that that
would lay the track for the road to two or three miles of this side of
Placerville.

Q. — Was there not an arrangement between the Sacramento Valley
Railroad Company and the Sacramento and Placerville Company to fur-
nish the iron for the road if the Sacramento and Placerville Company
would do the grading ?

A. — There was a proposition to that effect made by Mr. Robinson at a
public meeting, but it was not accepted. They wanted ten per cent, aud
first mortgage bonds, I believe.

Q. — How many persons were present at that meeting whom you,
knew?

A. — Well, perhaps there were seven or eight persons.

Q. — How far do you say the iron will go ?

A. — The iron that is now on hand, if no long switches are laid, will
come threo miles east of Placerville. This iron the Company have on
hand and have paid for.

Q. — Have they any rolling stock h«re or on the way ?

A. — No, sir. They are having locomotives and cars constructed.

Q. — Are they being constructed for the San Francisco and Washoe
Railroad, or for the Sacramento and Placerville Railroad ?

A. — For the Placerville and Sacramento Railroad, of course.

TESTIMONY

J±. J. LOCKWOOD

AND

C. E. DeLONG.

TESTIMONY OF A. J. LOCKWOOD,

(SENATOR FROM ORMSBT COUNTY.)

Mr. Chairman — Were you a member of the last (second) Nevada
Constitutional Convention ?

Answer — I was.

Q. — Do you remember the appearance of Leland Stanford, President
of the Central Pacific Railroad Company, before that Convention ?

A.— I do.

Q. — On what invitation and subject did he appear before that Conven-
tion ?

A. — Well, he came into the Convention, and it was at the suggestion
of Mr. Warwick that he appeared before us. Mr. Warwick rose and
stated that Mr. Stanford was present and requested an opportunity to
explain to the Convention about railroad matters.

Q. — Have you read his speech and his replies to inquiries then pro-
pounded to him, as reported by the official reporter of the Convention?

A. — I have.

Q. — Is that a correct report ?

A. — I do not think it is in some particulars.

Q. — If it is erroneous in any portion, say where and how ?

A. — I will state this : On page ninth of the printed copy, in reply to
the question there recorded as made by Mr. Collins, the answer is incor-
rectly given. As you will see, the question asked by Mr. Collins was:
"Do you think that if this State shall give bonds for one, two, or three
millions of dollars, or agree to pay the interest for an indefinite period
of time on the bonds of the Company, that would really facilitate and
hasten the completion of the road across the mountains?" The answer
of Mr. Stanford, as here reported, is : " It would very much." My recol-
lection of Mr. Stanford's reply is exactly to the contrary. And my
recollection is very clear upon that subject. I would like to state to the
committee the reason why his answer, as I distinctly understood it, made
a deep impression on my mind. The reports of the Convention will
show, or ought to show, exactly how this was. I will state the reason
why this reply of Governor Stanford made such a deep impression upon
m}' mind, and convinces me that I am correct in my recollection. The
reports of the Convention will show that the members who were opposed
to the introduction of that clause in the Constitution which allowed the
people of Nevada to vote three millions* of dollars to the first Railroad

172

Company that reached the State line, were very strenuous in their oppo-
sition. I put my opposition on the ground that we were not able to give
anything; that it was as much as we could do to support a State Gov-
ernment at all. Hence my peculiar and particular interest in the reply
of Governor Stanford to such a question as this. And I state that the
reply by Governor Stanford to the question by Mr. Collins was : " I can-
not say as it would." Here it is put down : " It would very much." I
would state that I have shown this question and answer to every mem-
ber of the Convention whom I have seen since this printed copy came
out; and I have yet to meet the first one who is not of the same impres-
sion as I am.

Mr. Haskell — The impression is, then, among you, that there has been
fraud on the part of the official reporter?

A. — I don't know where the fraud is, if there is any; I think there is
a decided error here; I don't charge anybody with fraud; it is a mis-
take, probably ?

Q. — Well, you think there is a fraud in the printing of this report ?

A. — I think the answer here printed is the very opposito of the one
kctualiy given. If the question and answer had been about a compara-
tively immaterial point, I might have supposed that so many of us were
mistaken ; but this was a question and answer on the essential point.
We had been discussing this very subject among ourselves and in the
Convention for several daj'S. When Mr. Stanford came upon the stand,
I presume that a majority of the members of the Convention had such
a question as this in their minds.

Chairman — Mr. Lockwood, did you make any notes at that time ?

A.— I did.

Q. — Do you recollect making a note of this question and answer?

A. — Yes, sir, 1 do, distinctly.

Q. — Can you remember how you noted it?

A. — Yes, sir. It was to this effect : Governor Stanford stated, in
answer to a question by some member of the Convention, that this dona-
tions of two or three millions in bonds, which was proposed, would not
aid in the construction of the railroad so as to hasten its completion
across the mountains so much as a year, or a month, or a week. He
came down to a week; and my impression is that he stated that our
proposed donation would not hasten the completion of the work a single
day. 1 think that the question was then distinctly asked, if our pro-
posed donation or bonus would facilitate the construction of the railroad
one day; to which he gave a negative answer.

Mr. Larrowe — What did he say would not facilitate its completion ?

A. — This gift of State aid from Nevada. You understand, I presume,
how it was proposed to place a clause in the Constitution for the benefit
of this Eailroad Company? It amounted to this : The Constitution
was to allow the Legislature to submit a proposition to the people
of Nevada to make a grant or gift of threo millions of dollars to the first
railroad that reached the State lino. That was what Governor Stanford
stated he did not think would facilitate the construction of the road.

Q. — Was all that in reply to Mr. Collin's question ?

A. — No, sir. If I was trying to state the very words which Governor
Stanford used in reply to this question of Mr. Collins, I would say that
he said : "I could not say as it would."

Mr. Haskell — What did he say about its not hastening the completion
of the road ?

173

A. — He said it would not hasten it a year; and 1 think he came down
to a month, and a week, and a day.

Q. — What reason did he give, if any, why it would not facilitate the
completion of the road ?

A. — He put it on the ground that the Company had ample resources
already.

Chairman — Have you read this report of Governor Stanford's speech,
and the questions that were propounded to him, and the answers which
he made ?

A. — I have.

Q — Is such a reply as you have stated — concerning the facilitating of
the construction of the railroad across the mountains by Nevada Slate
aid — is such an answer to be found in this printed report ?

A. — I must say that I have not found it. Mr. Stanford is reported on
the eleventh page of this report as replying that he could not say that
it would make a difference of a year. But he stated distinctly that it
would not make any such difference; and I think he came down to a
day; said it would not make any difference at all in the building of the
road. That was the substance of what he said.

Mr. Larrowe — He said in reply to the question which you have read,
by Mr. Collins, that he could not say that it would facilitate and hasten
the completion of the road across the mountains; and gave as a reason
that the company already had sufficient means for the completion of the
work ?

A. — Yes, sir. I took notes of what he said for the purpose of making
an argument against the proposed clause in the Constitution, to which I
have referred. I undertook to prove the gross impropriety of putting
such a clause in the Constitution, by Stanford's own speech ; because he
said that the time for the completion of the work would not be hastened
by this amount of aid from Nevada.

Q. — And your impression is that Governor Stanford said that this pro-
posed three million aid would not hasten the completion of the road to
this State a month, or a week, or a day ?

A. — Yes, sir. He said so.

Q. — But you are not positive whether that reply was made to Mr. Col-
lins, or to some other member of the Convention ?

A. — I think the question which brought out that reply in full, came
from Mr. De Long.

Q. — What do 37ou say as to the accuracy of the other questions and
answers, as they are printed in this report ?

A. — Why, sir, I do not pretend, and 1 did not at that time, to charge
my memory with these questions and answers. I do not pretend to put
my memory against the general accuracy of this report. I presume that
it is generally accurate. I do not doubt or question that. But I did
charge my memory, and I only charged my memory, in regard to such
questions and answers as immediately pertained to the argument I pro-
posed to make at that time. I was looking out for just such questions
and answers as this, at that time, and I have notes which sustain my
memory on these points. If I bad expected a summons before this
Committee this morning, I would have brought my notes down with
me. If I am mistaken, then every other member of the Convention
whom I have been able to see since this report came out, are mistaken
with me. And I think that if we are in error, at least a great majority
of the Convention were in error, and acted in regard to this proposition
on a strange misapprehension.

174

Q. — Well, you don't pretend to say that you can give the exact lan-
guage which Governor Stanford used in reply to Mr. Collins' question?
You give only your impression ?

A. — I do pretend to say, most emphatically, that Governor Stanford
did not use the words which are here printed in reply to this question
by Mr. Collins. I am positive as to that. For this reply here is in con-
flict with the understanding that every one had ; and it is even in con-
flict with an answer which Governor Stanford is credited with making
on page eleven of this report. Here he says, according to this report,
that a gift of two or three millions to the Company by the State would
very much hasten the completion of the work. On page eleven, he says
that " he could not say that it would make a difference of a year.v That
is to say, he does not think that three millions aid granted in the form
which he preferred would hasten the completion of the road a year. I
watched him very close, in noticing his answers to all this class of ques-
tions, from this fact, among others : I thought ho was very guarded in
making his replies to these questions.

Mr. llaskell — You say that he stated in answer to this question of Mr.
Collins' : " I could not say that it would ? "

A — I say, if I was to attempt to give the very form of his answer I
should say that he said : "I could not say that it would." I repeat, I
have asked a number of members of the Convention about this question,
and they have unanimously agreed that that was the answer.

Mr. Larrowe — Would it make a very material difference of impression
on your mind whether he said "I could not say that it would," or re-
plied, as it is here reported, "It would very much."

A. — Well, I should rather say it would. If you want an answer
directl}T to that question, I will say that it would make a very material
difference. I take it there is a vast difference between those answers.
And I think that very few men standing in such a position as Governor
Stanford did at that time, before the Convention, would make a reply to
a question of that character in such an indistinct and equivocal tone as
to leave an understanding quite the opposite to his words. I will state
again, that he appeared to be guarded in his reply to these questions,
and he spoke with clearness. I will state further, that the impression
and understanding left upon the minds of the members of that Conven-
tion by these replies contributed very materially toward the striking out
of that clause in the Constitution proposing State aid to this railroad
company; because, soon after Governor Stanford had closed his remarks
before the Convention that clause was stricken out almost unanimously.

Q. — Did he state that the railroad company of which he was President
had sufficient aid for the construction of the road which they had under-
taken ?

A. — He stated that they had abundant resources.

Mr. Haskell — This printed report came from Mr. Marsh, the Official
Reporter of the Constitutional Convention, on the request of the Com-
mittee?

Chairman — Yes, sir.

Mr. Haskell — And is supposed to be an official report from Mr. Marsh,
is it not ?

Chairman. — Yes, sir.

TESTIMONY OF CHARLES E. DeLONG.

SWORN BY CHAIRMAN OF SENATE COMMITTEE.

Chairman — Were you a member of the last Nevada Constitutional
Convention ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Do you remember the appearance before that Convention of Ice-
land Stanford, President of the Central Pacific Eailroad Company ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — On what invitation did he appear before that Convention ?

A. — He appeared before us on the invitation of members of the Con-
vention, to address us on the subject of the Pacific Eailroad.

Q. — Have you read the reported speech of Governor Stanford before
the Convention, and the following questions and answers, as furnished
the Committee on Railroads by the Official Eeporter of the Convention?

A. — Yery little of it. 1 first saw it this morning.

Q. — Did you observe any material errors in that report?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Will you state to the Committee what errors you have noticed in
that report ?

A. — My recollection argues substantially with the statement which
Mr. Lockwood has just made in regard to this answer to Mr. Collins'
question, found on page nine.

Now, if the committee will peimiit me, I will make a little statement
of what my recollection in general is in regard to this matter; and then,
of course, I will answer any interrogatories that may be put to me.

Chairman — Certainly — proceed.

Mr. De Long — I gave up my seat to Mr. Stanford, and moved to a
seat directly in front of him, which I occupied while he was speaking.
I took with me a pencil and some paper, and sat down in front of him
for the purpose of making notes of his speech, as I was decidedly in
favor of striking out all provisions for appropriations to any road. Ac-
cordingly, while he was speaking, I took notes. I made a note of his
estimates. He made a showing of all the assets ot the Company, in the
shape of the road already built, the government bonuses, the first mort-
gage bond privilege, the appropriation from San Francisco, and from
Sacramento and Placer counties, the guarantee of interest in gold by the
State of California on a certain amount of their bonds, which made them,
he said, as good as so much money in hand After he had proceeded
with his statistics upon that branch of the subject, he then proceeded
with his estimates of probable costs. After he had concluded that branch

176

of bis speech, my figures showed that the sura total of the assets, as
given by him, exceeded the sum total of his estimates of cost, something
like two millions of dollars. I then so stated the fact to him, and he did
not deny the correctness of my figures. Mind : In speaking of these
assets, I merely refer to those which he gave as available toward the
construction of the road. But then I included, of course, the actual
Government subsidies which would come to the Company at so much
per mile as the road progressed. Strictly speaking, these would not be
assets on hand ; but if they could progress with the road as the law re-
quired, these would fall to the Company in the course of its construc-
tion. &Iy figures embraced the present and prospective assets of the
Company, as he detailed them. They had reference to the Government
subsidies that would accrue as the road was built; and I took into ac-
count the right the Company had to issue first mortgage bonds. I recol-
lect rising in my seat and saying to Governor Stanford : Well, then, sir,
if these figures and facts which you have given us are correct, your
Company has two or three millions of dollars of assets available for the
construction of the road more than you need to complete it ?

He did not deny this statement.

I recollect, then, distinctly, asking Governor Stanford this question, in
this very form, I think :

Governor, suppose we were to pass this clause providing for an appro-
priation of three millions of dollars from this State for the benefit of
your road, suppose the Legislature should submit that proposition to the
people, and the people should endorse it, and the Legislature should then
act in conformity with that endorsement, considering the limited re-
sources of Nevada, the small amount of taxable property — showing
plainly that it would be very hard for us to raise an amount sufficient to
carry on the State Government — what do you suppose you could nego-
tiate the bonds for, which would be issued by us, in the city of New
York ?

He said that he did not know.

I asked him if he thought they could negotiate them for seven hun-
dred and fifty thousand dollars.

He said he thought they could.

I then asked him how much he thought that netted appropriation of
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars would hasten the completion
of the Central Pacific Railroad to this State. How much sooner it would
come with our appropriation than without?

His reply was, that he did not know.

I then asked him if he could state any particular amount of time that
would be saved in the construction of the road by our aid through such
an appropriation ?

He said he could not state.

1 then questioned him in regard to this matter of saving time by our
appropriation; and I ran down in my questioning on this point to one
week ; and my recollection is very distinct that his final and concluding
answer was, that our appropriation would not bring the road here three
daj's sooner than it would come if the appropriation was not made.
I was then perfectly satisfied, and then I closed my inquiries. And as
soon as Governor Stanford was through I moved to strike out the clause
in the Constitution providing for an appropriation, and it was stricken
out by an almost unanimous vote. I am very dear about the fact
that he said that our appropriation would not bring the road here
sooner by three days than it would come without the appropriation.

177

I will state here, that I may not be misunderstood, that I was not in
favor of placing anjT power to appropriate in the Consiitution ; but know-
ing, at the outset, that I could not carry that point, I framed an amend-
atory proposition, providing that a three million grant might be submit-
ted by the first Legislature. I thought that was better than the provi-
sions in the first Constitution. But I was really opposed even to this.
I am very frank to admit that I watched Governor Stanford during his
speech for the very purpose of obtaining reasons to urge in favor of
striking out this provision. I did not wish to fix on the State of Nevada
a liability to incur any great railroad debt. I did not ^hink^we were
able to stand it.

Mr. Larrowe — Have you examined the questions put by you and the
answers made by Governor Stanford, as reported and printed in this
copy?

A. — Yery hastily; and only a few moments ago. I didn't notice any
particular error; though mjT recollection agrees with Mr. Lockwood's
about the answer to Colonel Collins' question. What I remember more
particularly were the omissions. I don't think all the questions and
answers are there. I know they are not.

Mr. Haskell — You did not notice any positive'material errors ?

A. — I cannot say that I did, myself.

Q. — But you think there are some omissions?

A. — I known there are ; I don't think anything about it.

Mr. Larrowe — Can you direct us to any portion of the report where
you think these omissions occur?

A. — I cannot exactly tell where my questions, and interruptions came
in, I only state what I know passed between Governor Stanford and
myself while he was on the stand ; and that matter belongs in there
somewhere.

Q — I see on page seven of this report you are represented as asking
this question : " Then I understand j^ou to say that you prefer that there
should be no donation at all rather than to limit it as this proposition is
limited?"

A. — Yes, sir, that is correct.

Mr. Haskell — I notice a question on page five, right hand column,
near the top: "Do you think they would sell in the aggregate for more
than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars?"

A. — I asked some such question.

Q. — But above that you make the inquiry: "I will ask the Governor
this question : What do you suppose the bonds of the State of .Nevada
for three millions of dollars, at seven per cent a year interest, could be
negotiated for abroad, without a railroad running to our borders?"

A. — That question is not full enough, I went on and stated : Consider-
ing our limited resources, and almost incapacity to carry on a State
Government, what would the bonds realize. Now here is thereply, as
reported here: "Beally, Mr. De Long, without a road at least contem-
plated, they would be very low in the market, in my opinion." Then I
am reported as questioning him : " Do you think they would sell in the
aggregate for more than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars?"
The answer here is: "Yes, sir, I think they would realize over that
( amount, and certainly, with the prospect of a railroad," and so on. Now,
1 sir, right in this place there should come another question binding him
I exactly to this point, that he could not say that they would sell for over
I seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars; but he thought they would
| sell for that amount at least. Then, I asked him how much this amount
21a

178

realized from our bonds would facilitate the construction of the road, in
point of time. I think the interrogatory came in right there. And he
answered me as I have already stated.

Q. — You will see by referring to the next column, that Mr. Fitch
asked Governor Stanford : " I will ask Governor Stanford, what is the
average estimated cost, per mile, of building the road from Sacramento
to the State line?" Governor Stanford replies: "The original estimate
made by Mr. Judah, the Chief Engineer, who made the surveys, was,
that it would cost between twelve and thirteen millions of dollars; that,
however, was prior to any action of Congress giving assistance to the
road, and it was not then contemplated to build so good a road as the
Act of Congress requires. That requires a first class road in every re-
spect. A road might be built which would, to some extent, answer the
purposes of a railroad, at some less expense. Since that time there never
has been a complete estimate of cost of a first class road, such as we are
building?"

A. — Yes. sir, that is all there, but it don't answer the question.

Mr. De Long — Does this printed report profess to be a full and com-
plete report of Governor Stanford's remarks?

Chairman — It is so endorsed. It commences with Mr. Stanford's intro-
duction to the Convention, and closes with a vote of thanks extended to
him for his remarks and replies.

Mr. De Long — Well, it is no such thing as a full report. It don't be-
gin to be. I pledge my recollection and word, it is not two thirds of what
was said. I thought this only purported to be a portion ot his speech.
Upon my word, this don't contain more than a fraction of what Gover--
nor Stanford said; now I look at it I am satisfied it does not. Why,
Governor Stanford was engaged in speaking to us for an hour and a
half, and here is a speech that could not have occupied over fifteen or
twenty minutes in delivering.

Chairman — Will you please read the question and answer to which
Mr. Lockwood particularly referred, on page nine?

Mr. De Long examined the questions of Mr. Collins, and the reply as
printed.

Mr. De Long — Mr. Lockwood was certainly right in his testimony.
Governor Stanford never made that answer. I don't remember particu-
larly about this question by Mr. Collins; but then Governor Stanford's
replies, when on this point, were all to the contrary of this. This was
the great point we had to urge, and we took the conclusive statement
out of his own mouth.

Chairman — What was the result-1— if a result on the main question
which was then before you, can be traced directly from his remarks —
what was the result of Governor Stanford's speech and his replies to
queries before the Convention on that occasion?

A. — I have no earthly doubt but that if Governor Stanford had not
come over here, this Nevada Constitution would have contained a clause
providing for an appropriation of three millions of dollars by the Legis-
lature to the first road that reached our State line. The fact of that
clause being stricken out from our Constitution was the direct result of
his speech ; it immediately followed the conclusion of his remarks and
replies. He seemed to satisfy the whole Convention, as he satisfied me,
that by putting that clause into the Constitution we should only mort-
gage ourselves and our posterity for a road, the completion of which to
our doors was not to be hastened a day by our aid. At least that was
Governor Stanford's testimony on behalf of the Company of which he
was President.

179

Mr. James — Then, partially, the object of the examination was to
know whether an appropriating clause should be put in the Constitution,
or not ?

A. — He stated to me what his object was in desiring to appear before
the Convention. He said that he would rather have nothing in the Con-
stitution than have it provided as was proposed, that three millions of
bonds should be issued to the railroad company that first reached the State
line. He said that this was for the reason, that when they went East
to sell their bonds, they did not want it generally understood in market
that there was a possibility of there being another road built across tho
mountains. He said that such an impression would injuriously affect
the negotiation of their bonds. He told me, distinctly, that he would
rather have the proposition left out entirely, than have it in that shape.
And we gratified him by striking it out entirely. In one sense he was
successful in his arguments and statements before the Convention. The
amount of it was : If the Central Pacific Railroad Company could not
have these bonds issued or guaranteed directly to them, or could not get
an express provision for paying the interest on so many of that Com-
pany's bonds, Governor Stanford did not want a clause in the Constitu-
tion providing for any railroad appropriation at all.

Q. — On page seven of the printed report, first column, near the top of
the page, you are reported as asking this question :

" Inasmuch as the appropriation heretofore proposed by the Conven-
tion is not agreeable to you in its present form, and inasmuch, as, if we
make a direct issue of three millions of dollars in bonds, it will not bo
worth much — take either horn of the dilemma — what is it the wish of
the Company that we should do ? Let you alone ?"
To this the President of the road is reported to reply:
"I would prefer that you should let us alone, rather than provide
that the State should grant assistance to the first road that comes to the
State line,-and thereby impair confidence in this route."
Tou say : " We want to stimulate strife."
To this Mr. Stanford replies :

"You can hardly expect to get two roads built across the mountains,
Mr. De Long ?"

Is that correctly reported :

A. — It is. But what I have just stated had more particular referenco
to the substance of a conversation which I had with Governor Stanford,
outside of the Convention, and before he came in. We had a full under-
standing as to this matter before he appeared in the Convention. I
recollect about these questions and answers; but I remember that he
told me, with a great deal of emphasis, that he had rather have no pro-
vision in the Constitution at all for a railroad appropriation, than to have
the clause which we proposed. He did not want an appropriation con-
tingent on anything. He said they would not need any help when they
got on the plains. What they wanted was aid in constructing the work
across the mountains. He wanted an appropriation, or a provision for
an appropriation, directly to the Central Pacific Railroad Company, to
aid them in getting into the Territory; and he didn't want a clause in
our Constitution which would indicate or intimate that there was another
road pointing this way with any prospects or probable chances of suc-
cess. He said that such a clause would raise this intimation or suspicion,
and hurt their negotiations in Eastern money markets. He would rather
have nothing in the Constitution about railroad appropriations, than
have it read in that way.

TESTIMONY

JOSEPH KLOPPENSTEIN.

TESTIMONY OF JOSEPH KLOPPENSTEIN.

Joseph Kloppenstein, being duly sworn, testified as follows :

Chairman — Where do you reside?

A. — I reside at Sacramento city.

Q. — What is your occupation ?

A. — Merchant.

Q. — How long have you resided in Sacramento?

A. — Fifteen years last summer.

A. — Are you acquainted with the Directors of the Central Pacific Kail-
road Company?

A. — I am.

Q. — Are you somewhat familiar with the inauguration of the work
known as the Central Pacific Eailroad ?

A. — I am, somewhat.

Q. — What is the character of your acquaintance with the institution of
that work ?

A. — Well, I don't know exactly the character that you want to
come at.

Q. — Do you know about the date when the first work was commenced
on that railroad ?

A. — I could not tell the date exactly. I suppose it is about two
years ago.

Q. — You know the Company was organized under what was known
as the Pacific Eailroad Act?

A.— I do.

Q. — Have you any connection with the Central Pacific Eailroad
Company ?

A. — I have not, at present.

Q. — Were you ever connected with it?

A. — Why, I had taken some stock, or did subscribe to take some
stock ; but I never paid my assessment. I refused to pay it.

Q. — How much stock did you subscribe for?

A. — Well, I had agreed to take ten thousand dollars' worth in the first
place; and one of the directors came to mo and told me that I could
just tako what I wanted then, merely to make a commencement. So I
just put down one thousand dollars, and said the balance could be taken
at any time. I had agreed to take ten thousand dollars worth — prom-
ised to.

Q. — What sums did you pay ?

184

A. — I did not pay any sums.

Q. — You did not pay any ?

A. — No, sir.

Q. — Why did you not pay any ?

A. — I was not satisfied with the proceeeding of their work — the way
they were going on.

Q. — Now will you be kind enough to tell the Committee how they
they were proceeding with the work ?

A — When the Company came to let the contract, the contract was let
without any publication or public notice.

Mr. Haskell — That was the reason you did not take stock — because
you were not satisfied ?

A. — No ; the reason was this : I did take some stock in the first place,
and agreed to take ten thousand dollars if everything went on straight;
and as the work did not go on straight, according to their agreement —
what I supposed was the agreement — I did not take any more stock,
and refused to pay the assessment when they came around to collect.

Chairman — What was the agreement which you understood them to
make for the prosecution of the work, when they had sufficient subscrip-
tions for their stock.

A. — The understanding was, that they should give public notice, and
have bidders come in and compete with them for the work. But the
work was let without any publication or notice in the prints, that I have
ever seen. The contract was let to Charles Crocker & Co., without any
notice. I supposed there was something wrong in the proceedings, and
would not pay any assessments. I refused to have anything to do
with it.

Q. — Did you pay anything on the original one thousand which you
subscribed?

A.— I did not, sir.

Q. — You state that, so far as you know, they did not publicly call for
contractors, but let the work to Charles Crocker & Co., without any such
publication ? ,

A. — Yes, sir ; if any such notice has ever been published, I havo
never seen it ; and I think I was there all the time this was going on.

Q. — From* what you know of the proceedings of that company, and
from your acquaintance with the parties and their acts, what is your
opinion as to their good faith, or the contrary, in the prosecution of this
railroad enterprise?

A. — In regard to the faith that I have in the men and the work under
their control, I think my opinion is this : That they expect to build the
road as far as will control the travel over the mountains. That is my
opinion, and beyond that I do not know what they mean to do. They
may mean to build it across here, and they may not. I think they merely
mean to control the travel over and across the mountains.

Mr. Haskell — "What is your opinion in regard to the good faith of the
parties having this work in charge?" Is that about the sense of the
question, Mr. Sumner?

Chairman — Yes, sir.

Mr. Haskell — What is the answer?

Witness — The answer is, that I think they mean to go on with the
road until they can control the travel and freights over the mountains
with their toll road.

Q. — And no further. Do you say that is your opinion ?

185

A. — What they expect to do further than that I do not know. I judge
from indications, and what I have seen so far.

Chairman — Do you know the general reputation which this company
has in Sacramento, or elsewhere, among business men, as to the good
faith of their intentions to prosecute this railroad enterprise to the ex-
treme limit of their section ?

A. — Opinions and faith are somewhat divided among the people gen-
erally in the city, and, by what 1 can ascertain, abroad.

Q. — In regard to faith in their proceeding with the work, have the
capitalists in Sacramento generally subscribed, and paid assessments on
their subscriptions to the stock of this company?

A. — I never saw the books containing a record of what has been paid
in, and 1 do not know the amount. Men told me that the}7 had paid
their assessments, and I know men who have subscribed who never paid
their assessments.

Q. — Did you desire to see the contract which was let to Crocker & Co.?

A.— I did.

Q. — Were you permitted to see that contract?

A. — I was not.

Q.— Did you ever ask to see the books of the company generally?

A. — I did not ask to see the books of the company. I asked for that
contract, which was for four hundred thousand dollars. I believe it was
for four hundred thousand dollars. There was a committee of citizens
called upon to meet down at their office one evening. I was one of the
number. They were called upon to ex<imine the report of the works;
what they had done up to that time. I was a little late, and Mr. Judah
had already made an explanation. There was none of the committee
looked at the books, that I remember of. When they get through I
asked for the contract, the original contract between Charles Crocker
and the Central Pacific Bailroad Company. They said they had a copy
there; that we could see it. I asked for the original, myself.

Mr. Haskell — They said you could see this copy ?

A. — They said they would show us a copy of it. I asked for the origi-
nal One, but they did not want to show it, and 1 took up my hat and
left.

Q. — What reason did they assign for not wishing to show you the
original contract?

A — They gave no reasons. I wanted to see it to satisfy myself.

Q. — They gave no reasons at all?

A. — No, sir, no reasons. They said that this copy was the same as tho
the original, I believe, or something of that kind.

Chairman — You desired to see the original?

A — Yes, sir.

Mr. Haskell — But they said there was a copy, which you might see.

A. — Yes, sir. They said there was the copy. I did not look at it.

Chairman — When they offered the copy did you still insist on seeing
the original ?

A. — When they did not want to show the original I did not insist on
it, because it was none of my business. I had none of the stock paid in
then, and thought it was none of my business, and did not insist on see-
ing it. I took my hat and left.

Mr. Haskell — You desired to see tho contract, and they showed you a
copy ?

A. — I did not see it, but they offered to show it.

Chairman — Why did not you look at the copy ?

186

Mr. Haines — Did they express an unwillingness to show the original?

A. — Well, they said that was a copy of it, and the same as the origi-
nal. Upon that I left.

Chairman — Did they say where the original was ?

A. — I do not remember whether they did or not.

Q. — Did they say it was not there in the office ?

A. — No, sir, I do not think they did. I would not be positive about
that.

Mr. Haskell — You are not positive about that ?

A. — No, sir, I am not. I do not think I asked them whether the origi-
nal was there or not.

Chairman — Have they ever called on you for your assessments ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — What did you say when they called upon you ?

A. — I told th*em I would not pay ray assessment.

Q. — Did you give them any reason ?

A.— I did.

Q. — What did you give as a reason ?

A. — I told them I did not think they were going on with the road in
good faith. I told them that the indications which were before us did
not look clear enough.

Mr. Haskell — What were the indications by which you thought that
they were not going on with the road ?

A. — This first letting of the contract between Crocker and the Com-
pany. I wanted to know the parties interested.

Q. — You do not understand me. I ask, what were the indications
which led you to suppose they were not going on with the work ?

A. — Well, I thought the Central Pacific Eailroad Company took the
contract themselves; without giving public notice for bidders.

Q. — You misunderstand the question ?

A. — No, sir; I understand the question.

Q. — I ask, what were the indications which led you to this conclusion?

A. — Those were the indications.

Q. — Did not they go on with the work ?

A. — They went on with the work. But I am telling you about the
letting of the contract.

Q. — But the point is this : Were you afraid they were not going on
with the work ?

A. — No, sir; that is not the point. But as regards my faith in the
work ; I did not think they were going on rapidly. I did not think they
were going on earnestly. But they went on with the work. You asked
me what reasons I had for disbelieving, or losing faith, in their going
on with the work. That is the way I understood you.

Mr. Haines — I understood you say<that their course in not publish-
ing a notice for bids, but giving the contract to their own Company, was
not in good faith ; that they did not give it to the lowest bidder, but let
it to their own Company without any bids?

A. — That is the idea.

Mr. Haskell — One question only. Yon say you did not pay your
assessments because you were afraid they were not going on with the
work, I believe ?

A. — I mean, in the proper manner; in the way I thought they should
go on with it.

Chairman — One question. What was Charles Crocker's connection

187

■with the Company at the time this contract was let to him, or just pre-
vious thereto ? Was he an officer ?

A. — I would not be positive, but I think he was.

Mr. Haskell — You do not know?

A. — I would not be positive ; but think he was.

Mr. James — He was a large stockholder, was he not?

A.— Yes, sir; he was a large stockholder, — at least he was so re-
ported.

Mr. Haines — A large stockholder ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Mr. Haskell — Do you know whether he had any stock or not?^f
i A. — Well, only by what he said. I did not go and look at the stock
book to see what he had taken or you had taken.

Q. — You only know by what was said ?
I A. — Well, we heard that stock was taken to the amount of five hun-
dred thousand dollars, and divided among five or six men.

Mr. James — Directors of the road ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Mr. Haskell — I asked you if Mr. Crocker owned any of the stock, and
you stated you did not know of your own knowledge ?

A. — I did not see the stock issued to him. I never even saw the cer-
tificates of the Company.

Q. — Do you know whether he was an officer or not ?

A. — Well, the papers said he was. I did not see him sworn in; so I
cannot swear positively, as to whether he was an officer or not.

Mr. Haines — You found his name published as one of the officers of
the road, and he was considered so by the citizens of Sacramento and
California?

A. — That is the way we looked at it; it being so published in the
papers.

Mr. James — Do you know whether his name has been published in a
report of the Company as one of the stockholders ?

A. — I do not know. I do not think any publication was made stating
who the stockholders were, but only the officers. But in the list of the
originators of the road, he was amongst them. I never saw any of the
■tock issued ; never saw any of the railroad stock in my life.

Chairman — You never saw any of the stock?

A. — No, sir, I did not; and I never saw any of the men who put down
for stock, or any of the members. I may have seen a few of them, I
think ; I might have, but I would not undertake to remember how much
they had. But it is supposed if a man is a director of a road, he must
own so much stock. That is the law.

Mr. Bishop — I understand you to say that this work commenced
about two years since ?

A. — I do not remember the exact time. If I was to go home and
refer back to incidents which have happened since, I could probably tell.

Q. — How much stock did you subscribe for at the start?

A — The agreement was that I was to take ten thousand dollars worth,
of Rtock.

Q. — Did you or not subscribe for that amount of stock in this Com-
pany ?

A. — No, sir; I did not, at that time, or at any other time either. I
took a thousand dollars at one time.

Q. — You took one thousand dollars at one time ?

188

A. — Tes, sir; I subscribed for one thousand dollars at one time. And
I agreed at the same time to take ten thousand dollars in all.

Q. — Did you really ever subscribe for that ten thousand dollars ?

A. — No, sir; I never realty subscribed for it. The agreement was
that I was to subscribe it — I believe at the time the work was going on,
before the contract was let.

Q. — Did you ever take that one thousand of stock ?

A. — No, sir.

Q. — You never did.

A. — No, sir.

Q. — You say you were not satisfied with the proceedings of the Com-
pany; that you did not think they were going to proceed in good faith,
towards the road ; that the first thing that led you to think they were
acting unfairly, was their letting the contract to Crocker & Co. "Who
did you refer to as composing the " Company " in Crocker & Co. ?

A. — The Pacific Kuilroad Company, with Crockers.

Mr. James. — The balance of the Directors?

A. — Yes, sir

Mr. Bishop. — Do I understand you that the contract for grading the
road was let by the Company to officers of the Companj'?

A. — That is what I understand. I do not know who the partners of
Charles Crocker were, or are.

Q. — Was there anything in that contract which was calculated to de-
fraud any of the members of that Company in any way ?

A. — Well, it wouid in this way : If they took a contract which was a
very fat one, of course they would make the money themselves.

Q. — The Company consisting of a certain number of stockholders,
each one being an owner in the concern, and the contract let to the
Company, with Ch'arles Crocker as President and at the head of the
Company, could you imagine any way in which there could be a swindle
perpetrated ?

A.' — Well, I think there could be a swindle — yes, sir. They might let
a very fat contract to themselves. While the other stockholders or
owners in the road might hold most of the stock, they might let a con-
tract for one hundred thousand dollars more than it was worth and take
it themselves.

A. — Do you say that contract was let to officers of the road or Com-
pany ? i

A. — The road let it to one of the officers of the road.

Q. — Do you know anything more about how this contract was let than
by common rumor ?

K. — Common rumor; just exactly what it is to the present day.

Q. — You know nothing positive in regard to how this contract was let,
then ?

A. — I never saw the contract.

Q. — Did you ever hear any person give testimony upon that point, so
that you could be positive ?

A. — I have heard men testify their opinion in regard to it.

Q. — Merely from rumor?

A — I do not know whether from rumor, or what kind of rumor, or
how it was.

Q. — Well, it was mere conversations between friends and enemies of
the road ?

A. — Yes, sir.

189

Q. — Has that Company been engaged in the construction of the road
Bince that time ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Do you know whether they are still engaged in the construction
of the road, or not ?

A. — I have never been up to or seen the woi*k out of Sacramento.
Eumor says they have been at work; that they had one thousand or
fifteen hundred men at work. I do not know anything about it ; 1 have
not been to see them at work.

Q. — You say you think this Gompany intends to build the road so far
as to enable them to control the freight and passenger trade across the
mountains, and no further?

A. — That is ray opinion.

Q. — Upon what do you base that opinion ?

A. — My opinion is based upon their opposition to this memorial which
you wish to send on to Congress. I base my opinion upon the fact of
their fighting that memorial, considering that an evidence that they do
not wish Congress to allow any opposition road to come in contact with
them.

Q. — Is that the ground of your opinion ?

A. — That is one of the grounds.

Q. — Have you any other grounds, aside from their opposition to this
memorial ?

A. — Well, my business calculation would tell me that they were not
the men to build it, the way they are going on.

Q. — Eave they expended money lavishly and foolishly ?

A. — I do not know as they have.

Q. — Have you known of their making contracts with any parties for
a greater amount of money than was necessary?

A. — I do not know as they have. They have got the thing to them-
selves.

Q. — Do you know anything about the prices they have paid for lumber,
iron, or other materials?

A. — I do not.

Q. — Do you know anything about the prices they are paying for labor
or superintendents on the road ?

A. — I do not know what they are paying. I have heard it said, but
simply have it as a rumor.

Q. — Do you know anything about what amounts the Secretary, or
other officers of the Company, have been receiving from the Company ?

A. — I do not.

Q. — You are acquainted with the grants and bonuses made by Con-
gress to the Central Pacific Eailroad Company ?

A. — O yes, sir. I do not know as I remember them distinctly.

Q. — Do not you think that, with the Congressional aid given to the
Company, and the capital owned by the stockholders, they will be ena-
bled to construct that road ?

A. — I do not think they will build it.

Q. — Do not you think that they would be enabled to build it, by virtue
of that aid?

A. — I do not know as they can. They may build it. That is my
opinion, of course, and does not make it so.

Q. — Do you not believe that the Government pays enough money to
build the road ?

A. — If it is expended properly, they may build it.

190

Q. — As a business man and as a financier, have you knowledge of the
cost of constructing a railroad ? Do not you think that Congress has
given donations liberal enough, and money and bonds sufficient to con-
struct that road across tho mountains ?

A. — It would depend altogether whether they would expend it
properly.

Q. — Well, provided it is expended properly, then do you think the
road could be built with that aid ?

A. — I do not know as I could tell whether it would be built or not. It
depends on whether it is expended properly, in my opinion.

Q. — I ask you whether, if expended properly, in a judicious manner
and to advantage, they could complete the road?

A — I do not know as I can form a correct idea of what it will cost to
tunnel through these mountains. If I was to make a careful calculation
I could tell.

Q. — Then, I understand, you are unable to give any real opinion as to
whether they could build the road or not?

A. — I do not know as a man could tell ; I do not know as any man
could tell whether they could build it or not.

Q. — Are you not governed in your opinion more by your prejudices
against the road, than any knowledge you have of their fraudulent
transactions?

A. — I have no prejudices against any body connected with the road.

Q. — You say that you do not know of their having made any foolish
or extravagant use of money, so far?

A. — I do not make it my business to go and inquire into their business,
because I do not owe them anything, and they do not owe me anything.

Q. — You say that you asked to see the contract that was entered into
between the Company and Crocker?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — They remarked to you that they would show you a copy ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Did you make any remark, at tho time, that }tou would rather see
the original? Or was that all the conversation that took place at the
time?

A. — I would not be positive, but I think I left then. I think that
when they refused to show the contract, I left the room and went away.

Q. — Did they explain, in any way, why they would show you the copy
instead of the original ?

A. — I do not know as they did ; I do not remember as they did. 1 do
not think there was anything more said, because I was satisfied then
that I could not get a sight at w?hat I wanted to see, and went away.

Q. — You stated that you wTere a little late when you got there that
evening, and that Mr. Judah had been explaining matters to those who
were present?

A. — Yes, sir; in regard to the Central Pacific road.

Q. — And the general condition of the company ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Do you know whether this company had been examining the
books, or not?

Witness — which ?

Mr. Bishop — The committee you speak of?

A. — They did not see the books ; they just saw the survey. At least,
when I was there, they only saw the survey, and heard the explanation
of Mr. Judah.

191

Q. — Did you hear Mr. Judah make his explanations that evening, any
portion of them ? ,

A. — I heard some of them.

Q. — What did Mr. Judah say ? What was the substance of his infor-
mation ?

A. — I could not tell you exactly what he said. It is too long ago to
remember any such thing as that.

Q. — Well, about what did he say?

A. — -Well, he was in favor of the road, and they could build it, and so
on. He assumed to be in favor of this as the route if the road was built,
which is now claimed as the Dutch FMat swindle.

Mr. Haskell — You state that you do not know of any moneys that they
have improperly expended in any instance?

A. — No, sir, I do not know as they have; but I do not know how they
expended any. I cannot tell. I know they are at work frittering away
money and doing something. I do not know how they expended money
because I did not make it my business to inquire.

Chairman — Are you a surveyor or civil engineer?

A. — No, sir.

Q. — You do not profess to be ?

A. — No, sir.

Q. — You were asked if it were possible for this company, being stock-
holders, and taking a contract, to defraud themselves. Is it, or is it not
notorious that the General Government has granted this company largo
subsidies for building this road ovor the mountains?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Would not it be very easy to, and is it not very obvious that this
company could take contracts and gather to themselves the fruits of
these subsidizes, by letting them out at figures disproportionate to the
actual value of the work. Could not they take contracts on the basis of
the stock, and make their figures so largo for the contracts as to absorb
the subsidies?

A. — I think they could.

Q — And in that way could not they swindle the Government out of
the subsidies ?

A. — That is what I am afraid of. That is the point I am afraid of. If
it is done all on the square, it is all right; but I have not the faith that
it is all right. That first contract was for " four hundred and fifty thou-
sand dollars," and I was afraid of it, as it was given to Charles Crocker.

Mr. Haines — What was the general opinion and feeling, as you heard
it expressed, at the time the first contract was let for four hundred and
fifty thousand dollars ?

A. — Well, I suppose there were at least one half, if not two thirds, of
the friends of the Pacific Eailroad that objected to it, to my knowledge;
those with whom I have conversed.

Q. — Stockholders ?

A. — Stockholders and riends of the road. It did nov make any differ-
ence whether they were friends or stockholders; half or two thirds of
those I have conversed with expressed a regret that the contract was let
the way it was. I mean those of my acquaintance.

Q. — Did they or did they , not think that they might, if they had adver-
tised for proposals, as is the usual way, have had that same work done
for much less money?

A. — It was told me by a gentleman who seemed to be conversant with
that kind of work, that it could be done for much less.

192

Q. — How much less ?

A. — Well, I have heard some gentlemen say for one hundred and fifty-
thousand dollars less. I never figured on the work, consequently I could
not tell.

Q. — Has there been any report made since then, of the work done and
money paid, and so on, of the stockholders, to your knowledge ? n

A. — I never saw it. If I have seen it I do not remember it.

Q. — Has there been such a report made at any time ?

Witness — In regard to what?

Mr. Haines — The money expended and the condition of the road?

A. — I never saw it, or if I have I do not recollect it.

Q. — You have been in a position to hear of it?

A. — Yes, sir.

Mr. Haskell — Has not the Chairman of this committee such a report
in his possession ?

Witness — You might have seen it and I not.

Mr. ICaines — Have not we the only report over here?

A. — 1 have never seen one.

Q. — You are one of the citizens and residents of Sacramento. Has
there been any report published and circulated there, which we have
not here?

A. — I never saw one.

Mr. Bishop — You state that you never inquired in regard to any of the
business of the company ?

A. — I mean that I have never gone to examine any of the books of the
company. This which I have stated has beon talked about among busi-
ness men.

Q. — One more question in regard to this contract for four hundred and
fifty thousand dollars: Is that the contract you refer to as having been
made with Crocker & Co.?

A. — It was the first. contract let, I think. I believe so; I would not
be positive.

Q. — That was the contract made with Crocker & Co.?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — You say you have never seen that contract, and know nothing
about it, except from rumor ?

A. — That is all. The papers published it.

Q. — You would not swear it was four hundred and fifty thousand?

A. — Only from what the papers published and rumor generally. I
never saw the contract.

Q. — Then I understand you that you have spoken from the informa-
tion which you have gained from outside sources, nothing official ?

A. — Outside sources. I have obtained my information from the
papers. The contract was published in the papers, or the amount it was
let for, I believe.

Q. — Then you have gained your information merely from newspapers,
conversations on the streets and talk with business houses?

A. — From stockholders and people interested in the road.

Mr. Haskell — What stockholders ?

A. — Stockholders in the city.

Q. — Name some of them ?

A. — I do not know as I could remember who the men are just now.

Q. — Name any one of them, just one will do ?

A. — I could not swear to any particular one, because this was two

193

years ago. Anything like that I would not be very likely to charge my
mind with.

Q. — But if there was a general clamor among the stockholders I should
think yon could remember the name of one;
A. — 1 did not say there was a general clamor.
Q. — Well, two thirds, you said ?
A. — I did not say two thirds, did I.
Mr. Haskell — Half or two thirds, you said.

A — Stockholders or friends, I said. There are a good many men who
are friends of the road but not stockholders.
Q. — You can correct your testimony, if wrong.

Witness — J have repeated it two or three times. I said stockholders
or friends of the road.

Mr. Haines — You did not know whether they were stockholders or
not?

A. — I could not tell. Do not know who the stockholders are.
Mr. Haskell — And you cannot name any one stockholder who ex-
pressed himself as dissatisfied with the mode in which this contract was
let?

A. — I cannot at this time. 1 suppose, if I could think back, I could
remember half a dozen of them.

Q. — But you cannot now name any?
A.— No, not exactly. No, I cannot.

Chairman — You were originally a friend of this road, were you?
A. — I was, and I am.

Q. — You are a friend of a road across the mountains ?
A. — Yes, sir, I am.

Q. — You are interested, as a citizen and business man in the construc-
tion of such a road ?

A. — I am. If I had not been I would not have held out the induce-
ment that I did.

Mr. Haines — You are particularly interested in the building of tho
Pacific Railroad ?

A. — Yes, sir. It has not done me any good either.
Chairman — Have you any interest in the Sacramento Valley Eailroad ?
A. — I have not.

Q.— Have you any interest, present or prospective, in the San Fran-
cisco and Washoe Eailroad ?
A. — I have not.

Mr. Bishop — Are not you as much financially interested in the San
Francisco and Washoe road as you are in the Pacific. That is, that you
own no stock in either?

A. — I do not own any stock. They can make me pay for some stock ill
the Central Pacific road, if they are a mind to do it. They can make
me pay twenty per cent, I suppose.

Q.-— But you own no stock in the other road?
A. — None in the other.

Chairman — If a road was constructed, via Dutch Flat, to Washoe,
would it not be more advantageous to your business than would a road
from Freeport ?

A. — It certainly would be more advantageous to me than a road from
Freeport.

Q. — Naturally the Dutch Flat road would be more to your advantage,
would it not?

22a

194

A. — Yes, sir. Because Freeport cuts off Sacramento City, and of course
a road built by that route would undoubtedly hurt us.

Mr. Bishop — Are you acquainted with the different routes proposed by
these Railroad Companies ?

A. — Well, I have traveled over the mountains I don't know how many
times — probably a dozen or two. I do not know as I have followed the
surveys or not.

Q. — Are you sufficiently acquainted to give an opinion as to the feasi-
bility or practicability of either route ?

A. — I do not know as I could. In fact, it would be impossible for me
to do it if I desired to.

Mr. Haskell — Have you ever formed an opinion which is the best nat-
ural route ?

A. — I do not know as I have, or expressed it in any way. I might,
and I might not.

Q. — Do not you know that the Central Pacific .Railroad Company has
had a great many hindrances in the way ot law suits and litigation ?
You know that the California State Aid Law was opposed, do you not ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Q. — Do you know who opposed it ?

A. — Well, the people did.

Q. — Do you who, and where their interests lay ? Do you know the
common rumor about that ?

Q. — Because they were obtaining a great deal of money out of the
people generally, and they did not know where it was to be expended.

Q — You never heard it from any other source ?

A. — No, I do not know as I did.

Q. — Do you know who opposed their obtaining the subscription from
San Francisco ?

A. — I suppose the enemies of the road, or the people in San Francisco
themselves, the same as I would, if a property owner and resident there.

Q. — You never heard anything about it, and do not know anything
about it, do you ?

A. — O ! yes, sir. I have heard of it. I have a good many things. I
suppose you might term it Louis McLane & Co., or some body else, and
citizens of San Francisco — those opposed to the tax. That is the way I
tako it.

Q. — Citizens of San Francisco never opposed the California State Aid
Law, did they ?

A. — Did not thev ! "Well, I should think they did oppose it.

Q.__Where ? ■. , <

A. — Well, the people among themselves, there.

Q._Where ?

A. — Well, among the citizens, there.

Q. — Did they oppose it at the polls ?

A. — They did not have anything to do with it at the polls; but when
it came up in the Legislature, they did. The bill had friends and
enemies. The friends of the bill, of course, carried it through. Of
course, some had objections against the bill.

Q. — You say the citizens of Sacramento opposed it. Where ?

A — In the Legislature. Did not they oppose it there, and make a
fight against it, before they got their bill granted ?

Q. — I ask where the citizens of Sacramento opposed it ?

A. — I am testifying to what I know has been done — that is all.

195

Q. — Some fought against it, but the members from Sacramento went
for it, did not they ?

A. — I do not remember whether they all went for it, or not; but I
think they did. Sacramento does not constitute the whole State of Cali-
fornia, if there are two or three or four members from there.

Mr. Haines — Has not it been your experience that almost any bill can
be passed through almost any legislative body (that ever met in Califor-
nia) where there is money enough expended for that purpose ?

A. — That is what they say.

Q. — Is it not a conceded fact, so far as any interest of Sacramento is
concerned ?

A.— Yes, sir.

Q. — That money will carry almost any measure proposed ?

A. — Yes, sir.

Mr. James — Are they pushing forward the work on the Latrobe road ?

A. — I have not seen anybody at work. I have passed there. They
may be at work off from the main road on which I traveled.

EVIDENCE

L. L. ROBINSON, C. E.,

AND

F. A. BISHOP, C. E.,

AND

WILLIAM J. LEWIS, C. E.

EVIDENCE OP L. L. ROBINSON, C. E.

San Francisco, March 7, 1865.
Charles A. Sumner, Esq.,

Chairman Senate Committee, and

H. Epstien, Esq.,

Chairman House Committee, Legislature State of Nevada :

Gentlemen : — I am in receipt of your favor, second instant, covering
certain interrogatories propounded to me, and answer them seratimf
to wit :

Question. — Where do you reside ?

Answer. — For the time in Sacramento city.

Q. — What is your occupation ?

A. — I am by profession a Civil Engineer.

Q. — What has been the extent of your experience in your occupation
or profession ?

A. — I have been engaged in the construction of railways and public
works for over twenty years; and in that time have had charge, as
engineer, and constructed, as constructor, railways in Canada, Maine,
New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois,
and California, and have visited and examined, in connection with my
profession, all the public works of engineering importance or notoriety,
throughout Europe and the United States.

Q. — Are you, or have you, been officially connected with any railroad
company constructing a road from the Sacramento River, or any point
thereon, to or toward the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada? If
yea, what is the history, present work and business intentions of said
company ?

A. — My only connection with any work of that kind is with the Sac-
ramento Valley Railroad. I constructed it in one thousand eight hun-
dred and fifty-five, and opened it for business in one thousand eight
hundred and fifty-six. It was constructed, or nearly so, under the late
Mr. Judah, as its engineer. He left the service of the company before
it was completed. The road cost very much more than the engineer's
estimate, and its receipts were very much less than the estimate of the
engineer. It was originally intended to construct the road lo Marysville,
but owing to the embarrassments of the company, it was never con-
structed any farther than its present terminus — Folsom. It has always
enjoyed a large local business, and has always fostered and encouraged,
in all ways, other routes connecting with it.

200

Q. — Are you acquainted with the officers of what is known as the." San
Francisco and Washoe Railroad Company?"

A. — I am acquainted with the President and Chief Engineer, hut do
not know that I am acquainted with any other officer of the Company.
I know, perhaps, two or three of the Directors.

Q — If " yea," is it a bona fide company ?

A.— Yes.

Q. — If you are acquainted with them, what is the business character
and capacity of the officers and original incorporators of the San Fran-
cisco and Washoe Railroad Company ?

A. — So far as my acquaintance extends, I knew them to be men of
wealth and good standing in society, as also men of integrity. The
Engineer of the Company I know well, and I have a high estimation
of his professional acquirements.

Q. — Do you know when it was proposed to organize the Company? if
so, when ?

A. — In the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty.

Q — Between what points is the Company authorized to build ?

A. — Between Placerville and the eastern line of the State of California.

Q. — What work has been done, if any ; its character, extent, cost, etc.,
toward the fixing of a route across the Sierra Nevada, by the San Fran-
cisco and Washoe Railroad Company, or its originators ?

A. — The only work which has been done between Placerville and the
State line, is a full and careful instrumental locating survey to the east-
ern line of the State, and the preparation of elaborate maps and profiles,
with careful estimates of quantities and cost, at a cash expenditure of
about ten thousand dollars. Between Placerville and Folsom (the present
terminus of the Sacramento Valley Railroad) a very large amount of
work has been performed. The road was opened for business between
Folsom and Latrobe, a distance of fifteen miles (thirty-eight from Sacra-
mento,), last August ; another section of twelve miles is far advanced
toward completion, and will be in operation by June — making a distance
of fifty miles out of Sacramento ; and the balance of the distance to
Placerville (some ten miles,) has been located, and will probably be com-
pleted and in operation within one year. All the iron required for the
road to Placerville. and beyond, is on hand in California. I do not know
the actual amount expended (including cost of the iron), between Folsom
and Placerville, but should think it near seven hundred and fifty thou-
sand dollars.

Q. — What has been the business conclusion of the originators or mana-
gers of said Company, upon such surveying work across the Sierra Ne-
vada, as may have been done under their direction, and at their expense ?

A. — The conclusion arrived at is, that the- route is a practicable one^
with maximum grades of ninety-five feet per mile, and a minimum
radius of curvature of eight degrees, at an average cost of seventy-five
thousand dollars per mile

Q. — What is your opinion and belief as to the command of capital for
the construction of a railroad from Placerville to the base of the eastern
slope of the Sierra Nevada, by the San Francisco and Washoe Railroad
Company ?

A. — I believe that capital can be raised under negotiations now
pending.

Q.— If you think adequate capital can be commanded for such work
by the San Francisco and Washoe Railroad Company, can you state,
with explicituess from what sources it may be expected, or has been

201

guaranteed ; or upon what basis do you date your conviction (if such it
be) that this amount of capital, for this purpose, can be obtained ? Please
answer fully and with as many particulars as are in your power to
impart.

A. — I date my conviction that capital can be obtained from my knowl-
edge of the negotiations now in progress in Europe and the United
States; also from the fact that the route offers inducement for private
capital over and above all other routes so far developed across the moun-
tains, as being of lighter grades and curvatures, of less cost in construc-
tion, of being central to the traffic of the country in its location, of re-
quiring less time in construction, that it can be worked cheaper per mile
per year when completed, and that it commences at Placerville, a dis-
tance of about sixty miles from the Sacramento River, leaving a much
less distance to build by this company than by any other; and from the
further fact, that when the line is completed to the valley of the Carson,
it will have a virtual control of the local trade and travel of the richest
and most thickly populated portions of Nevada.

Q. — Does, or not, the survey of the San Francisco and "Washoe Rail-
road route start from the last stake of the Placerville and Sacramento
Valley Railroad at Placerville terminus of the latter?

A. — It does. The differences of elevation between"rthe initial point
and the old terminus of the Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad
is one hundred feet; distance over one mile. The relocation throws the
Placerville and Sacramento Valley Railroad, fifteen feet higher, and it
can be thrown eighty feet higher, if necessary, so that a connection can
be made, if desirable, on nearly a level grade.

Q. — Have you ever made any railroad survey from the Nevada State
line to the base of the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. If so, when,
and what was the character of such survey ?

A. — I never made such survey.

Q. — Within what period of time do you think a railroad can be com-
pleted from Placerville (the assumed point of commencement), to the
base of the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, on the surveyed route of
the San Francisco and Washoe Railroad, with the employment of all the
labor that can be made simultaneously available on the same?

A. — From my knowledge and experience of mountain work, and from
the many delays which will necessarily arise on a work of such magni-
tude, coupled with the difficulty of working to advantage during the
winter months, and the scarcity and uncertainty of labor on this coast, 1
should say that five years would be a reasonable time, provided there
was no delay from financial causes.

Q. — Within what time do you think the road will be built on that
route?

A. — I am unable to answer with precision ; but from my knowledge of
both routes across the mountains, and the physical obstacles which must
be encountered on both, I have no hesitation in stating my conviction
that the road via the San Francisco and Washoe Railroad route will be
completed much sooner than will be the case on any other route.

Q. — Has the San Francisco and "Washoe Railroad Company, or any of
its originators and incorporators, opposed or hindered the construction
Of the Central Pacific Railroad? Please state in reply fully, as you are
informed or otherwise ?

A. — Not to my knowledge. I am without information from any one,
and do not know that any of the originators or incorporators of the San

202

Francisco and Washoe Eailroad Company have in any way opposed or
hindered the construction of the Central Pacific Eailroad.

Q. — Are you acquainted with the route across the Sierra Nevada,
adopted by the Central Pacific Eailroad Company?

A. — I have a general knowledge of the route adopted by that com-
pany.

Q. — If "yea," what thoroughness (or otherwise), of examination havo
you given to that route ?

A. — I have examined with some considerable closeness tho route from
Sacramento to Dutch Flat, and thence to head of Bear Valley.

Q. — How is the Central Pacific Eailroad Company's adopted route
marked. By what indications, and are they distinct?

A. — Their route is marked, so far as my knowledge extends, by a road
in operation to Newcastle; thence by stakes, showing a locating survey
to Dutch Flat, or near there; and from there across the mountains by
distinctive marks, so far as stakes are concerned. But the physical con-
formation of the country above Dutch Flat fixes their route from thenco
to the Trnckee. It is possible that a routo may be found crossing the
drainage of Bear and Yuba rivers, and so crossing by Henness Pass;
but from my knowledge of the country, consequent on my connection
with wagon roads, I conceive that it would be, if anything, worse than
the present proposed route of the Central Pacific Eailroad.

Q. — Please give your opinion, with detail, of the character of so much
and such portions of the route adopted by the Central Pacific Eailroad
Company as you have already examined ?

A. — The work from Sacramento to the actual foot hills of the moun-
tains is exceedingly light. From thence to Newcastle it is not very
heavy; although gi'ades of one hundred and five feet per mile are en-
countered. From Newcastle to Clipper Gap somo heavy work is en-
countered. From Clipper Cap to Ulinoistown considerable heavy work
is met with. From Ulinoistown to Dutch Flat there is very heavy work.
And from Dutch Flat to head of Bear Eiver is, if anything, worse. And
from head of Bear Eiver to the foot of the heavy work on the east slope
of the Sierra it is literally tremendous.

Q. — As a railroad builder, please give your opinion as to the time that
will necessarily be consumed in the construction of the Central Pacific
Eailroad over such portions of their route as you have examined ?

A. — I should say that it would take the company until the month of
July, working two thousand men, to reach Clipper Gap; and working
economically, with an ordinary force of men, until some time in next
year to reach Ulinoistown. If this road can be constructed to Dutch
Flat within three years I should consider it a very short time in view of
the labor that must be performed. Taking into account the physical
difficulties on this route, and the enormous amount of expenditures ab-
solutely required, also the difficulty of doing heavy work during the win-
ter months, I should say, if the company were placed in possession of
funds sufficient to construct the road as rapidly as economy would jus-
tify, they might build the road across the mountains in ten years. But
when labor is scarce and prices as high as is the case on this coast, and
where financial difficulties must more or less retard a work of such mag-
nitude over such a route, I am of the opinion that ten years is too short
a time for the company to construct such a road.

Q. — What are the comparative merits of the Central Pacific Eailroad
company's route, and the route selected by the San Francisco and Washoe

203

.Railroad Company, with respect to ease, cheapness and rapidity of con-
struction ?

A. — From my knowledge of the country and examination of the sur-
veys made by Mr. Bishop, of the route of the San Francisco and Washoe
.Railroad Company, I am of the opinion that a railroad upon this route
can be constructed in a very much less time than a railroad can be built
on the route of the Central Pacific Railroad Company — I think in less
than one half the time — and I am confident that the former can be con-
structed at less than one half the cost of the latter.

Q. — Will you describe and illustrate some of the main difficulties in the
construction of a mountain road — such difficulties as are encountered,
according to your observations, on the Dutch Flat, and on the Plaeer-
ville projected routes ?

A. — Great difficulty is met with in the construction of mountain rail-
ways along the cliffs and canons. As the cross canons, which intersect
at right angles the face or line of main canon, cut so deep into face of
main cliff that? it is often impossible to run a railway into them and out
again. When the sinuosities of the main and cross or intersecting
canons can be followed, the location is entirely practicable; but as they
often cannot be followed, the railroad line is forced to cut into the cliffs
on each side of the cross in intersecting canon, in order to get as far up
the cross canon as possible, so that it can be bridged or trestled. If the
line is forced to cross the intersecting canon near its mouth, the crossing
becomes so wide and so high that it is almost impossible to accomplish
it. This necessity of throwing the line into the face of the cliff of the
main canon involves exceedingly heavy work. And in this canon form-
ation peculiar to the Sierra Nevada, it will often happen that a face of a
cliff, with a moderate general slope from vertical, will look, to an
unskilled observer (and may, even, sometimes, deceive a practical
engineer, at first glance,) as if a railway could easily be blasted out of
the face ; whereas a detailed instrumental examination will develop work
almost, if not quite, impracticable.

Mr. Bishop's line intersected several of these cross canons; but they
were of such magnitude and length as permitted him to ascend them on
one side, cross them, and then descend upon the other side. In these
places he encountered his heaviest work in entering the cross canon, in
crossing it when he had ascended it as far as practicable, and in getting
back again into the valley or main slope of the American River. Diffi-
culties of this kind will be encountered on the Dutch Flat route, above
Dutch Flat, without the character of relief in the topography of the
country which was found by Mr. Bishop on the Placerville route. Hence,
I term the Central Pacific Eailroad Company's route almost "im-
practicable."

It would be utterly impossible to cross the canons at their mouth ; as
the line is necessarily so high up on the face of the main valley, that to
continue straight across would necessitate a structure of such hight as
to be entirely impracticable; but on the Placerville route, by curving
into the cross canon (which rises very rapidly), and continuing up it un-
til a structure can be built to cross it. Mr. Bishop finds a practicable
route. And, in fact, this distance gained bj7 the line in ascending and
descending the canon is so great as to enable him to decrease his maxi-
mum grades. It will readily be understood that if a railway has a ^iven
number of feet to ascend, between two points, the shortest line will have
the heaviest grade.

The difference between Mr. Bishop's line and the Dutch Flat line is in

204

this particular very much in his favor. As he wants distance, and as his
line follows the main drainage of the country, it is enabled to ascend and
descend the tributary drainage, and so gain distance; whereas, on the
Dutch Flat route the line follows the ridge or division of drainage, and,
hence, being, as it were, in proximity to the head of the cross or tribu-
tary drainage, cannot develop distance, but is forced to follow the face
of the cliff, and when the line does intersect the cross canons they are so
short and deep that as the line cannot ascend and descend (as on Bishop's
route), it must cross them. If it cross in lino of face of cliff the crossings
become tremendous, if not utterly impracticable; so it is forced to cut
into face of the cliffs as far as possible in order to get up the cross canon
to the greatest attainable distance, and thereby decrease width and
height of crossing.

It is quite a difficult matter, without full illustrative diagrams, to de-
scribe these things so that they will be entirely comprehended.

Q. — Do you consider that Mr. Bishop's survey has demonstrated the
fact that a railway can be built on the Placerville route over the Sierra
Nevada, with a grade of not more than ninety-five feet to the mile ?

A. — :That fact has been demonstrated by Mr. Bishop's surveys.

Q. — Has it been demonstrated by instrumental survey that the rail-
road projected, via Dutch Flat, across the Sierra Nevada, can be built on
a grade of not more than one hundred and sixteen feet to the mile ?

A. — That has not been demonstrated. I have not a shadow of doubt
in my own mind but that the maximum grades of the Central Pacific
Eailroad, as limited by Congress, are too low to carry the work over the
mountains via Dutch Flat; in other words, the maximum grade of one
hundred and sixteen feet per mile, fixed by Congress, will not carry that
road over the summit. The distance in miles from Sacramento, multi-
plied by the one hundred and sixteen feet, will much more than reach
the elevation of the summit. But it must be borne in mind that from
Sacramento, for a distance of twenty-three or twenty-four miles, the
grade is quite light, not more than from fifteen to twenty five feet per
mile, and that from there to Clipper Gap, and beyond, their grades are
one hundred and five to one hundred and sixteen feet per mile, with
short intervals of level, or light grades. The report of Mr. Montague,
Acting Chief Engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad Compari}7, shows
that they cannot maintain their maximum grade from Clipper Gap to
Dutch Flat, but are forced to a reduction, as the ridge falls away nearly,
or quite, to a level. Considering these facts, and adding to their con-
sideration, the remark which Mr. Judah once made to my brother, J. P.
Robinson, when speaking about the route of the Central Pacific Railroad,
"that he knew what no one else knew, which if known would damn the
concern," and coupling these with my knowledge of the country through
which the road is projected to pass, I am led to the confident conclusion
and almost certainty, that their maximum grade will not carry them
over the mountains. I think this is really one great reason why they
have never had made, and publicly reported, a close instrumental survey
across the mountains, via their proposed route. They dare not have
that done; for if a close locating survey, like Mr. Bishop's, were made,
and the fact ascertained and published that their route requires one hun-
dred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty feet grades, their Con-
gressional aid would immediately fail them. I think that their object is
to get the road built as far as possiblo beforo the exposure takes place,
in the hope that their railroad will then be so far along that their wagon
road will control the Washoe trade.

205

Q. — "Were you intimately acquainted with Mr. Judah, late Chief En-
gineer of the Central Pacific Railroad Company?

A. — I was intimately acquainted with him, for ten years.

Q. — If ''yea," please state fully what you know of his history as a
railroad engineer on this coast; and what you know of his connection
with the Central Pacific Railroad Company ?

A. — His first connection with railroads on this coast was as engineer
on the Sacramento Valley Railroad, which road I constructed as con-
tractor. He left the Service of the Sacramento Valley Railroad Com-
pany before the road was finished to Folsom. He subsequently made a
survey fur a railroad from Sacramento to Benicia, and also for a short
railroad branch from the California Central Railroad, which he raised
means to grade. After all other active employment failed him, he was
engaged by Sacramento Valley Railroad Company's Trustee, J. Mora
Moss, Esq., and the Superintendent, J. P. Robinson, to explore the Sierra
Nevada Mountains, for routes for wagon roads north of the South Forks
of the American River, and at the same time act as agent for the Sacra-
mento Valley Railroad Company, in soliciting freight, etc During his
service with that company, he projected what is now known as the
" Dutch Flat route" across the mountains, and made a report in regard
lo it which was printed in the newspapers without the consent or know-
ledge of the parlies who were employing him. The Trustee of the Sac-
ramento Valley Railroad Company, deeming this information acquired
by Mr. Judah the property of that company, and that the report should
have been made to that companj^, instructed the Superintendent to dis-
charge Mr. Judah; which was done. Mr. Judah was very indignant at
being dismissed. Mr. Judah, from that time exerted all his energies
toward building a railroad across the mountains; organized what is
known as the " Central Pacific Railroad Company," upon subscriptions
raised by himself; connected himself with the present control of that
road ; remained in the employ of the company as Chief Engineer until
he realized one hundred thousand dollars of their bonds, when his con-
nection with it wTas dissolved, and he went home, never to return.

Q. — Can you furnish any statistics in regard to aid furnished by the
General Government, or by States, to Eastern railroad companies ?

A. — I have no statistics with me, such as j^ou wish. I know of no road
in the East built with the aid of Government bonds ; although lands have
been granted freely to aid in the building of railroads in the Western
States. Tbo Illinois Central Railroad Company received six square miles
of land per mile (three thousand eight hundred aud forty acres) — all
agricultural lands, lying on each side of the i*ailroad, and so brought into
active market by the construction of the road. The Erie Railroad was
aided by the State of New York to an extent of three millions of dollars.
Massacnusetts loaned the company engaged in boring the Hoosac Moun-
tains throe or four millions of dollai'S. Many railroads in the East have
been aided by States; but the heavier roads 'have generally taken care
of themselves. Cities and counties and towns have aided, but the Gen-
eral Government has not. *

Q. — Do 3-ou know of any organized plan for the construction of a
railroad from Freeport south, toward the city of San Francisco?

A. — The papers of organization for such a company having such a
work in view, are all signed and ready to be filed. We have been wait-
ing the result of examinations. It is intended to construct a railroad
from Freeport to Antioch, on the San Joaquin, and thence via Kerker's
Pass and San Pablo Creek or San Leandro Creek to Oakland or Alameda,

206

and to Yerba Buena Island. It is a distance of about seventy-five miles.
There are but two places on the line where heavy work is encountered,
and then only for a short distance. At least sixty miles of the entire
route is either level or nearly so, with scarcely any work at all required
upon it. -The explorations are going forward, and the instrumental sur-
veys will be made entire within the next ninety days. This road will
probably be built by the company now organizing for that purpose, and
when it is completed we shall have the shortest (by sixty miles), and the
cheapest (by some millions), route between San Francisco and either
Freeport or Sacramento.

Q. — Please furnish any information concerning proposed or projected
railroad lines or routes across the Sierra Nevada, which information may
be suggested as desirable by these inquiries, or which you deem of value
to this Committee, and the people of Nevada.

A. — In answer to this request, I can only say, that so far as my know-
ledge extends, there are at present but two competing routes across the
mountains ; one via the American River, one other via Dutch Flat and
Bear and Yuba Eivers. The first has been constructed as the wants of
the local population called for it; and until the organization of the San
Francisco and Washoe Railroad Company, was being constructed as a
local road. The survey made by Mr. Bishop across the Sierra Nevada,
developing the fact that this route was highly favorable, an organization
was effected which has given this route importance as the most feasible
route for a railroad between the Sacramento Valley and the Carson Val-
ley ; and it is losing its position as a local road and taking its position as
a through route across the mountains — having, I believe, no other object
than to reach some point in the vicinity of Virginia City, where it can
command the traffic to which it will be legitimately entitled in that sec-
tion, and to reach some central point in the Reese River section of Ne-
vada. That is all, as at present contemplated. The other route was
projected as a part tof the great Pacific Railroad across the continent.
In its course, as projected, it can never compete with the other for the
trade of Virginia, the Carson Valley, and all that portion of Nevada
south of Carson, or directly east of Carson as far as Reese River. The
one route is fostered by Government patronage and subsidies of
various. kinds; the other is being constructed by private energy and en-
terprise,, with but limited assistance from the county (EI Dorado) through
which it passes. Yet, 1 think, there is little or no doubt but that the
San Francisco and Washoe road can be built so much cheaper, that the
difference in cost between the two routes will fully reach the present
amount of Government aid extended to the Central Pacific Company,
and so, eventually, both routes will stand equal as regards ability to
construct.

[Signed.] L. L. ROBINSON.

Subscribed and sworn to before me, this eighth day of March, in the year
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five.

J. W. McKenzie, [seal.]
{Intei*b£*£enue} Notary Public.

EVIDENCE OF F. A. BISHOP, C. E.

To the Hon. Chas. A. Sumner, and Hon. Henry Epstein,

Chairmen Joint Committee on Railroads, of the Legislature of Nevada :

Gentlemen: — Tour communication, bearing date of the second
of March, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, stating that "the
Committee on Railroads of the Nevada Legislature, beg leave to pro-
pound the following inquiries/' is at hand. To the best of my ability, I
most cheerfully comply with your request :

Question. — Where do you reside ?

Answer. — In the city of Placerville, California.

Q. — What is your occupation ?

A.— I am a Civil Engineer.

Q. — What has been the extent of your experience in your occupation
or profession ?

A. — I have been engaged in it about thirteen years.

Q. — Are you, or have you, been officially connected with any railroad
company constructing a road from the Sacramento River — any point
thereon — to or toward the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada?

A. — I am Chief Engineer of the Placerville and Sacramento Valley
Railroad Company, whose road is now in the process of construction.
Fifteen miles of this road is in operation, five miles more will be ready
for the iron and superstruction by the tenth day of April next.

The western -terminus of this road is at the town of Folsom, the east-
ern terminus at the city of Placerville. Connection is made with the
Sacramento River, by the Sacramento Valley Railroad, which runs from
Folsom to the city of Sacramento, also by the Freeport Railroad, which
branches from the Sacramento Valley Railroad, and strikes the river
about fourteen miles (by the river) below Sacramento.

Q. — Are you acquainted with the officers of what is known as the
" San Francisco and Washoe Railroad Company f*

A. — I am.

Q. — If so, is it a bona fide company ?

A. — It is, to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Q. — If you are acquainted with them, what is the business character
and capacity of the officers and original incorporators of the San Fran-
cisco and Washoe Railroad Company ?

A. — The originators and officers of the San Francisco and Washoe
Railroad Company, are considered by the community in which they

208

residb,as men of prpbitj'and honor All are business men, and at least
possess fair business capacity. Several of them have the reputation of
possessing large means, which I believe to be true.

Q — Do you know when it was first proposed to organize this com-
pany ? If so, when ?

A. — I believe that its organization was intended as early as one thou-
sand eight hundred and sixty, but for certain reasons was not perfected
until one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four.

In the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven, when in the
employ of the United States Government as Civil Engineer, I reported
to the Secretary of the Interior in favor of this route. Although not
generally known, the matter of constructing a railroad over the Sierra,
on the Placerville route, has been a subject of earnest consideration
among certain heavy capitalists for a long time.

Q. — Between what points has the company incorporated authority
to build ?

A. — Between the city of Placerville and the eastern boundary of Cali-
fornia, in Tahoe Lake Valley, a distance of ninety-two miles.

Q. — What work has been done, if any, (its character, extent, cost, etc.)
toward the fixing of a route across the Sierra Nevada by the San Fran-
cisco and Washoe Railroad Company, or its originators.

A. — What is called by engineers "a thorough location," has been
made. This enables the cost of the work to be estimated with great ac-
curacy, and to arrive very closely to its outside limit.

It is not to be understood that this particular line in all places is the
best. When the construction is undertaken it will probably be found
that the reduction of a grade, or a slight defection in the line in different
places, may effect a great saving. The estimates show what this line
will cost. There has been about ten thousand dollars expended in mak-
ing the survey, and other matters pertaining to the fixing of the route
across the Sierra.

Q. — What has been the business conclusion of the originators or man-
agers of said company upon such surveying work across the Sierra Ne-
vada, as may have been done under their direction and at their expense ?

A. — The result of the survey was most satisfactory, the route proved
to be superior to what was anticipated, and at once the necessary steps
were taken to enlist capital and insure its construction, as an investment
its value is quite apparent.

Q. — What is your opinion and belief as to the command of capital for
the construction of a railroad from Placerville to the base of the eastern
slope of the Sierra Nevada by the San Francisco and Washoe Railroad
Company ?

A. — I believe that the company can command the capital necessary to
construct the road.

Q. — if you think adequate capital can be commanded for such work
by the San Francisco and Washoe Railroad Company, can you state with
explicitness from what sources it may be expected, or has been guaran-
teed. Or, upon what basis do you date your conviction (if such it be),
that this amount of capital for this purpose can be obtained. Please
answer fully, and with as many particulars as are; at your power to com-
mand?

A. — This question, perhaps the most important in the series, I cannot
answer to your satisfaction without the betrayal of business secrets. I
can say, however, that it is not expected that home capital will be em-
ployed in the undertaking.

209

Q. — Does, or not, the survey of the San Francisco and Washoe
Eailroad route start literally from the last stake of the Placerville and
Sacramento Valley Eailroad, at the Placerville terminus of the latter, on
the same level?

A. — It does ; but for reasons of policy the public are not informed of the
exact terminus of either road until the right of way has been secured.
Land damages in cities are sometimes excessive. The "initial point"
of the San Francisco and Washoe Eailroad, at Placerville, is between
ninety-six and one hundred feet (I have not the notes at hand for per-
fect accuracy), above the terminus of the Placerville and Sacramento
Valley Eailroad, as located by Mr. Wm. J. Lewis, in one thousand eight
hundred and sixty.

The distance, a little over one mile, in my relocation of the line in one
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, the terminus was thrown some
fifteen feet higher, which reduces the altitude between the two points so
that a grade of between eighty and ninety feet will connect them. The
location of the two lines are such that a very light grade could be ob-
tained if necessary. There has been much cavil concerning the initial
point of the San Francisco and Washoe Eailroad, therefore in addition
to my own surveys I offer the testimony of Mr. Wm. J. Lewis, who sur-
veyed the first railroad line into Placerville. The following will be
found on page eight of that gentleman's report :

"As the Placerville and Sacramento Valley Eailroad is designed to
form a link in the great railroad across the continent, I was desirous to
so locate the line at Placerville that it could be continued eastward from
that point. A line was run from a point in the explored line a short dis-
tance west of the town, crossing the creek, passing in the rear of Mr.
Kirk's house, and following up the ravine through which the George-
town road passes, which attained the summit between the waters of
Hangtown Creek and the south Fork of the American Eiver in a dis-
tance of one mile, and at an elevation of ninety-six feet above the initial
point. Adopting a grade of eighty feet to the mile the line would cross
this ridge with a cut of only sixteen feet. A reconnoissance of the divid-
ing ridge, without instruments, satisfied me that there are also practica-
ble passages through it east of this point."

I trust that it will be sufficient to say that the "initial point" of the
San Francisco and Washoe Eailroad is on the same summit where Mr.
Lewis' line terminated.

Q. — Have you ever made any railroad survey from the Nevada State
line to the base of the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. If so, when ;
and what was the character of such survey?

A. — I made a preliminary suiwey across the eastern summit, through
Walter's Pass, during the autumn of one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-two. This survey enabled me to ascertain the practicability of the
route, but was not sufficiently close to obtain detailed estimates. I think,
however, that I got information sufficient to justify my estimate of the
aggregate cost of constructing a road from the State line to the base of
the eastern slope of the Sierra.

23a

210

the San Francisco and "Washoe Kailroad, with the employment of all the
labor that can be made simultaneously available on the line?

A. — Were it possible to place all the skilled labor on the line that could
be made available, the work could be completed in a very short time;
say so soon as the longest tunnel could be constructed. The average
penetration per diem of some of the principal tunnels in the United
States, was a little over four feet. The longest tunnel reported on the
San Francisco and Washoe Eailroad is seventeen hundred and eighty
feet, which, at above rate, would require four hundred and forty-five
days. But with the exception of the tunnels the work could not be car-
ried on during the entire year, seven months, perhaps, would be a liberal
allowance for working time per year on the whole line. With the con-
ditions of the question filled, I think the road could be constructed within
three years.

Q. — Within what time do you think the road will be built on that
route ?

A. — From five to seven years, depending, of course, upon the political
condition of the country.

Q. — Has the San Francisco and Washoe Eailroad Company, or any of
its originators and incorporators, opposed or hindered the construction
of the Central Pacific Eailroad ? Please state in reply fully, as you are
informed, or otherwise.

A. — As a private enterprise it has never been opposed. But parties
interested in the San Francisco and Washoe Eailroad have objected to
paying taxes for the advancement of a concern which was projected on
the most meager information, and which, up to this day, is not positively
known to be practicable.

It is also assumed, that if the amount of traffic should accrue to the
road when completed, as estimated in their reports, it would be sufficient
to enlist all the private capital necessary for its construction. Private
capital, with the immense grants of land and bonds from the General
Government, ought to suffice without levying an additional tax upon
the people of California.

Q. — Please furnish any information concerning proposed and projected
railroad routes or lines across the Sierra Nevada, which information may
be suggested as desirable by these inquiries, or which you deem of pro-
bable value to this Committee, and to the people of Nevada ?

A. — The subject of railroad routes across the Sierra Nevada, has been
thoroughly discussed by the press of Nevada and California. There has,
however, been a great want of information concerning the details of the
topography of the routes traversed, so necessary to insure entire practi-
cability. The survey of the San Francisco and Washoe Eailroad has
supplied the information so long wanting, and being the only " thorough
survey" yet made over the mountains, must prove to be of great value
to the public. The only other route which claims attention, is that of
the Central Pacific Eailroad Company. Those two will doubtless be the
only ones projected across the Sierra for a long time to come. The for-
mer is designed to penetrate directly to the commercial center of Nevada,
a fact which should not be overlooked. It is certainly to the interest of
the people of Nevada to encourage all means which promise speedy
communication to the Pacific ports. The greater the competition for
the carrying trade, the greater must be the prosperity of the State.
There is, in my opinion, no State in the Union, and perhaps none in the
world, which would be so greatly benefited with a complete system of

211 *

railways, as Nevada. There will be business for all. Let her govern-
ment then bestow its favors with an impartial hand, and in the fullness
of time it will reap many fold returns.

FEANCIS A. BISHOP, C. E. [seal.]

Subscribed and sworn to before me, by the said Francis A. Bishop, at my
office, in the city and county of San Francisco and State of California,
this eleventh day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-five ; as witness my hand and official seal.

F. J. Thibault,
Commissioner for Nevada in California.

EVIDENCE OF WILLIAM J. J.EWIS, C. E.

To the Committee on Railroads of the Nevada Legislature :

Gentlemen : — In reply to your interrogatories, I respectfully submit
the following answers:

Question — Where do you reside?

Answer — I reside in San Francisco, California.

Q. — What has been your experience as a Civil Engineer ? What
length of time have you been engaged in such profession, and with what
engineering works have you been connected?

A. — 1 commenced my profession of civil engineering on the survey of
the Philadelphia and Columbia Eailroad, on the first of April, one thou-
sand eight hundred and twenty-eight, and was engaged in the survey
and construction of that road until February, one thousand eight hun-
dred and thirty-two, except for a short time, when I was absent on the
location of the Little Schuylkill, and of the Camden and Amboy Eailroad.
Was then Besident Engineer on the Philadelphia, Germantown and
Morristown Eailroad, until its completion in one thousand eight hundred
and thirty-five. Had charge of and completed the construction of the
Brooklyn and Jamaica Eailroad in one thousand eight hundred and
thirty-six. Was engaged as Eesident Engineer in the surveys across
the Alleghany Mountains, on the Louisville, Charleston and Cincinnati
Eailroad in one thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven, and in the
following years in the location and construction of the part of that road
(since called the South Carolina Eailroad) between Columbia and Branch-
ville. The last road in the East was the New.. Jersey Central, of which
I was Chief Engineer from July, one thousand eight hundred and forty-
seven, to January, one thousand eight hundred and forty-nine, when I
resigned to come to California. In one thousand eight hundred and
fifty-one, I made the first survey and report on the San Francisco and
San Jose Eailroad. In one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, I
located the railroad from Benicia to Marysville. In one thousand
eight hundred and fifty-five, a location of the San Francisco and
San Jose Eailroad, and in one thousand eight hundred and sixty, 1'
made a survey and location for the citizens of Placerville, of a railroad
from Folsom to that place. In one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
one, the construction of the San Francisco and San Jose Eailroad was
commenced. I acted as Chief Engineer until it was completed.

213

Q. — With what railroad construction are you interested at present ?

A. — I am now engaged in the location and construction of the Western
Pacific Railroad extending from San Jose" to Sacramento.

Q. — Are you acquainted with the route adopted by the Central Pacific
Railroad Company, for a line of railway across the Sierra Nevada ?

A. — I am not acquainted with the route of tbe Central Pacific Railroad
by personal examination, and know nothing more respecting it than is
stated in the report of the engineers of the compan}7-.

Q. — If yea, what is your opinion as to the practicability of that route.
Please answer with such details as will illustrate the character of any
section of the route (if such there be), which presents unusual difficulties
in the path of railroad construction. What think you will be the aver-
age mile cost of this road in the mountains proper?

A. — The report of Mr. Judah states that the maximum grade of the
Central Pacific Railroad is one hundred and sixteen feet to the mile,
which is also the maximum grade on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,
one of the most successful railroads in the United States.

The only formidable obstacle to be encountered in the working of the
Central Pacific Railroad is from the presence of deep snow on fifty miles
of the road for several months in each year. I have carefully read Mr.
Judah's statements in regard to the extent and depth of snow, and am
of the opinion that the road can only be kept open during the entire sea-
son by protecting it by heavy roofing over the elevated portions of the
Sierra Nevada.

The estimate of the cost of construction of the road is stated at certain
prices per mile. No exhibit is made of amount of earthwork, rock ex-
cavation, masonry, bridging or other items, to enable an engineer not
acquainted with the line passed over, or familiar with the countiy tra-
versed, to form an opinion in regard to the sufficiency of his estimate.

A. — About what would be the regular and safe daily carrying capacity
of a single track railway over the Sierra Nevada on the Central Pa-
cific Railroad route with its published gradients and curvatures?

A. — One engine of thirty (30) tons weight, with connected wheels,
will ascend a grade of one hundred and sixteen feet to the mile at a
velocity often (10) miles per hour, carrying a net freight of one hundred
(100) tons, exclusive of engine, tender and cars. It is evident, without
further statement, that a single track railroad, with side tracks at sta-
tions, will be sufficient for the traffic across the Sierra Nevada for many
years. There is no railroad of any considerable length which is sti'ictly
single track, Sidings are laid at stations, and increased as the business
of the road increases, until it becomes more convenient to facilitate the
passage of the trains to complete the second track throughout the length
of the road. All the principal railroads of the Atlantic States have now
telegraph lines working in connection with the road, by which the Super-
intendent is kept constantly informed of the position of trains and the
liability of collision almost entirely avoided. The cost of widening the
road for a second track is, under ordinary .circumstances, far less than
the preparation of the road bed for the first track.

Q. — Were you acquainted with Mr. T. D. Judah, late Chief Engineer
of the Central Pacific Railroad Company ?

A.— I was well acquainted with the late T. D. Judah, but know noth-
ing of his reasons for leaving the employ of the Central Pacific Railroad
Company.

Q. — Within what period of time, if you can form any opinion in the
premises, do you think that with the exercise of energy and the com-

214

mand of abundant means, a railroad can be constructed across the Sierra
Nevada on the Central Pacific Eailroad route ?

A. — With abundant means and reasonable energy the Central Pacific
Eailroad could be completed, I think, across the Sierra Nevada, within
three years.

Q. — Have you seen the recently published report of a survey made
across the Sierra Nevada by Mr. F. A. Bishop?

A. — I have seen, and carefully read, Mr. F. A. Bishop's report of Jan-
uary, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five.

Q. — If yea, what is your opinion of that report?

A. — The route of the road from Placerville to the State line appears to
have been carefully treated, and the amount of work calculated and
stated in the report. The prices attached to each item are ample, and
there is no doubt that with means on hand the work could be contracted
for and executed within the estimates. No details are given for the cost
of the work from the State line to the summit of the divide between Car-
son and "Washoe valleys, the minute survey not being carried beyond
the eastern boundary of California. Knowing well Mr. Bishop and Mr.
Arnold (under whose immediate direction the survey was executed), I
have no doubt the facts of the case are honestly stated.

Q. — What acquaintance have you, general or particular, with the to-
pography of the country over which Mr. Bishop's survey passes?

A. — In November last I traveled over the country between Placerville
and Carson, and examined the route surveyed by Mr. Bishop, my object
being to note particularly the qualities of soil and rock and other mat-
ters pertaining to that route. I expected to return via the route of the
Central Pacific Eailroad, but was prevented by the storm in the latter
part of that month.

Q. — Have you ever made any surveys over, or extending eastwardly,
into the Sierra Nevada?

A. — I have never made any surveys eastward of Placerville.'

Q. — If yea, please state as to the locality and character of those sur-
veys, and what connection or reference they may illustratingly have in
considering the merits of the Central Pacific or San Francisco and
Washoe Eailroad routes ?

A. — This question is already answered as far as regards my own surveys.
Maps of the different routes are before the Committee, who can make
their own calculations in regard to distances and advantages. As my
opinion is asked, I will state that I believe the shortest and most eco-
nomical connection between San Francisco and Virginia City, and the
southern portion of the State of Nevada, is by the way of what is known
as the Placerville route. The maps before you and. your own knowl-
edge of the wants of your enterprising young State, will exhibit this
matter so fully that probably no further illustrations are needed by your
honorable Committee.

[Signed.] WM. J. LEWIS.

Subscribed and sworn to before me, by said William J. Lewis, at my
office in San Francisco, California, this third day of April, in the year
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, as witness my
hand and seal.

F. J. Thibault,
Commissioner for Nevada in California.

QUESTIONS

ADDRESSED TO

LELAND STANFORD, PEES'T C. P. E. R. CO.

QUESTIONS

TO LELAND STANFORD, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA.

The Committee on Railroads of the Senate and Assembly of the State
of Nevada, beg leave to propound the following inquiries :

1. "What is your connection with the Central Pacific' Eailroad Com-
pany, and how long have you held your present official connection
therewith ?

2. "What amount of stock has been subscribed to the Central Pacific
Railroad Company- ?

3. "What amount of money has been paid into the treasury of the
Central Pacific Railroad Company on the subscribed stock?

4. What amount of stock has been subscribed for by Sacramento
County ?

5. What amount of stock of the Company has been subscribed and
taken by Placer County ?

6. What amount of money has been realized to the treasury of the
Central Pacific Railroad by the sale or other disposition of the bonds, or
subscribed and taken stock, of the railroad company by the counties of
Sacramento and Placer, respectively ?

7. What amount of stock of the company has been subscribed for by
individuals, and assessments refused to be paid thereon ?

8. Will you please furnish us the contract items of expenditure made
out of moneys received from assessments on subscribed stock by indi-
viduals, and county subscriptions and aids ?

9. Among the delinquents (of stock subscribers) are there any of the
Directors, and other officers of the company ? If so, what is the amount
of their delinquencies, respectively ?

10. Have any original subscribers to the stock of the company re-
fused or failed to pay assessments on their subscriptions, on the asserted
ground of loss or lack of confidence in the proper management of the
company?

11. Have any of the officers of the company received contracts from
the company ?

12. If "yea" to question eleven, for what work and for what sums
have such contracts been made, and by whom have such contracts been
taken ?

13. Have any of the former, (at one time) officers of the company,
soon after a resignation of official connection with the company, received
contracts from the company ?

218

14. If "yea" to question thirteen, then for what work and sura ?

15. Have any of the funds of the company been expended in the
construction of what is known as the Dutch Flat wagon road ? If "yea,"
to what amount?

16. Has the credit of the railroad company, by hypothecation or
otherwise, been used toward the construction of the Dutch Flat wagon
road? If "yea," to what amount?

17. Have any of the funds of the company been used to carry elec-
tions in favor of county subscriptions to the stock of the road, or other
county aid ? If " yea," to what amount ?

18. What are the salaries, respectively, of the officers of the com-
pany ?

19. Have the company Directors (or other officers in charge) refused
on any occasion to show their books and accounts to any investigating
committee, appointed from any of the counties of the State of California ?

20. How much does the company receive per mile for the construc-
tion of the road from Sacramento to the base of the western slope of the
Sierra Nevada from the United States Government? What in bonds —
(of what character ?) — and what in land ?

21. At what distance from Sacramento, on the line of the road, has
it been decided that the "base of the western slope of the Sierra Ne-
vada" was to be held, for the purpose of rating the amount of subsidy
due the railroad company, under the Pacific Railroad Bill, original and
amended ?

22. What is the grade of the road from Sacramento to the " western
base," etc. ?

23. What is the grade of the road from the " western base" to New-
castle, and from thence to Illinoistown ?

24. What amount of United States bonds and land have the com-
pany received, if any ?

25. What amount of United States bonds (exclusive of amount
already received,) if any, are now due the company ?

26. Have any moneys been received by the treasurer of the com-
pany arising from the sale, or other disposition of United States bonds,
obtained by the company in the fulfillment of their work on the road, as
required by the Pacific Railroad Act?

27. If the company have United States bonds in keeping, what is the
market value of such as may not have a coin (gold or silver) interest
guaranteed ?

28. What amount of aid has the State of California given to the road,
and in what form, and to what advantage now statable ?

29. When was the first work literally performed in constructing the
Central Kailroad ?

30. At the time of the commencement of the work on the road, was
it expected by the officers of the company that they would be able to
comply with the terms for progress in the work laid down in the original
Pacific Eailroad Act ?

31. What amount of United States Government aid, in bonds and
land, is now awarded for the construction of the road from the "western
base" of the Sierra Nevada eastwardly at the rate of twenty-five miles
or more per year ? [The Committee have been unable to procure a
copy of the amended Pacific Railroad Act, and beg leave to propound this
inquiry in this connection. There is a dispute (charge of error, merely)
as to statement of amount of Government subsidy per mile, found on
page six of your letter to the Committee of January fourteenth ?]

219

32. Since the work was inaugurated on the road, and up to this date,
what has been the average progress of the work ?

33. In what manner has the material, the rolling stock, etc., been ob-
tained ? By cash payments, or transfers of stock or bonds ?

34. What number of men are now actually at work upon the road —
engaged in the extension of it ?

35. How many men were actually laboring on the road on the first
of December, one thousand eight hundred and sixty -four ?

36. When do the company expect to reach Dutch Flat with their
rail ?

37. Do the company feel warranted in assuring the public that they
will, from this, make such progress in the construction of the railroad
as is required by the Pacific Eailroad Act now in force ?

38. Have the Central Pacific Railroad Company a thorough locating
survey over the Sierra Nevada?

89. If "yea" to question thirty-eight, when was such survey made,
and by whom ? And has such survey been entirely reported to the
company and the public ?

40. What is the entire estimated cost of the construction of the road
from Sacramento to the State line, in coin ?

^ 41. What is the aggregate value, in coin, of all the subsidies and aids
extended to the company from the United States Government, the State
of California, and the counties of Sacramento and Placer? What is the
present ascertained market value, in coin, of all these aids ?

42. What is the amount of monthly estimates for work now being
performed on graduations, with the amount paid for such work ?

43. What wages were offered (and what per diem has been paid) to
laborers applying for work on the road on the recent call for five thou-
sand laborers?

44. What are the names of the present contractors, actually at work
-or directing work on the line of the road ?

45. How much interest money does the company pay on their pre-
sent mortgage debt ?

No reply has been received to these inquiries.

Accompanying these questions was the following letter:

State op Nevada, \

Senate Chamber, March 1st, 1865. j

To Leland Stanford, Sacramento, California :

Sir: — The Joint Committee on Eailroads of Nevada Legislature, beg
'leave to propound the enclosed series of inquiries. The answers to many
of the questions will, of course, be substantially a repetition of statements
already furnished us; but the Committee deem it desirable to ask
for your full recital of facts in the form and with the connections ob-
served by the enclosed.

Some of the questions are propounded for the purpose of giving you a
direct opportunity to enlighten our people as to certain current charges
of mismanagement in the conduct of the affairs of the company of
which you are President.

Yery respectfully,

C. A. SUMNER,
Chairman Senate Committee.
H. EPSTEIN,
Chairman Assembly Committee.

STATEMENT

OF THE

ACTION OF FIRST NEYADA LEGISLATURE

JOINT RESOLUTIONS CONCERNING TRANS-SIERRA RAILWAYS.

HISTORY OF LEGISLATIVE ACTION,

ON KESOLUTIONS CONCERNING PROJECTED RAILROADS ACROSS THE
SIERRA NEYADA MOUNTAINS.

m HOUSE.

Wednesday, December 21, 1864.
Mr. Cutter, of Storey, offered the folio-wing preamble and resolutions

"Whereas, The necessity for the speedy completion and establishment
of railroad communication between the navigable tide waters of the
Pacific and the mining regions of the State of Nevada is apparent to us
as great and imperative; and

Whereas, Congress has provided what was deemed to be a liberal
bonus for the construction of such a railroad, and said Congressional pro-
vision has been secured exclusively to and under a corporation named
and known as the Central Pacific .Railroad Company, which, up to this
date, has constructed only thirty miles upon its proposed route, and
whose principal labor seems to have been to reduce the number of miles
ordered to be built per year (on pain of forfeiture), in the original Pa-
cific Eailroad Bill, having particular reference to this section of the great
trans-continental railway ; and

Whereas, Competition and rivalry in the construction of railways
which are to command the enormous passenger and freight traffic be-
tween the Pacific and the eastern slope of the Sierras, on a railway line,
is eminently desirable; and

Whereas, A line of railroad has already been constructed from the
town of Freeport, at the head of tide water on the Sacramento, and the
town of Latrobe, it being a distance of thirty-eight miles, on a nearly
direct line of communication with the Capital of Nevada; and

Whereas, We have creditable information that a large and wholly re-
sponsible body of respectable capitalists are prepared, with reasonable
encouragement, to push forward the railroad from Latrobe to the Capi-
tal of our State, on a route direct and feasible; therefore, be it

Resolved, by the Assembly, the Senate concurring, that our Senators
be instructed, and our Eepresentatives in Congress requested, to use
their utmost endeavors to secure the passage of an Act giving to the
corporation, or corporations undertaking, or which shall undertake, the
construction of a road from Latrobe, in the State of California, to Carson

224

City or Virginia, in the State of Nevada, the sum of ten millions of dol-
lars in United States six per cent bonds, at dates of thirty years, or less;
the same to be issued and made over to said corporation, or corpora-
tions, at such time as the work herein described shall have been com-
pleted; provided that the railway communication by this line from the
town of Freeport, at the head of tide water on the Sacramento Eiver, to
Carson City or Virginia, in the State of Nevada, be fully established and
in perfect running order, without break or interval of stage transporta-
tion, within a period not exceeding three years from the fourth day of
March, A. D., eighteen hundred and sixty-five.

Resolved, That his Excellency, the Governor, be requested to transmit
a copy of these resolutions to each of our Senators and our Representa-
tives in Congress.

Referred to a special committee of five, composed of Messrs. Cutter,
Rosenblatt, Brown, St. Clair and Beck.

Thursday, December twenty-second, reported back with a unanimous
recommendation that the resolution do pass.

Wednesday, December twenty-eight, recommitted to the Standing
Committee on Federal Relations.

Friday, January sixth, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, a
majority of said committee, consisting of Messrs. Haskell, Walter and
Shackleford, reported, recommending the passage of the following sub-
stitute :

Resolved, That in view of the magnitude of the work of constructing a
railroad over the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the necessity of its
speedy construction, Congress is hereby requested to extend such addi-
tional'aid in such manner as will best secure the earliest practical com-
pletion of that portion of the Pacific Railroad lying between the Sacra-
mento River and the valleys lying east of those mountains.

A minority of the Committee, consisting of Messrs. Epstein and Bien
dissented from the report of the majority.

Reports were accepted and placed on file, and original resolutions and
substitute made the special orde^r for Friday, January thirteenth, twelve
o'clock, M.

Friday, January 13th.

Consideration of the resolutions was postponed to Monday, January
sixteenth, at twelve m.

Monday, January 16th.

The resolutions were considered in Committee of the Whole.

Mr. Patten, of Storey, offered the following substitute :

Whereas, Railroad communication with the navigable waters of the
Pacific Ocean is deemed by the people of Nevada to be absolutely essen-
tial to their prosperity; and,

Whereas, Congress has passed an Act to aid in constructing a Pacific
Railroad from the Missouri River to the navigable waters of the Sacra-
mento River, in said Act creating a franchise for that purpose, and
making conditional grants of bonds and land to the companies autho-
rized to enter upon the work of building said Pacific Railroad to the
boundary and across the territory of this State ; therefore,

Resolved, By the Assembly, the Senate concurring, That our Sena-
tors and Representatives be requested, in view of the magnitude of the

225

work of constructing a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to
urge Congress to grant such additional aid to the companies authorized
by law to construct it as will best secure the earliest possible completion
of that portion of the Pacific Railroad between the navigable waters of
the Sacramento Eiver and valleys lying east of those mountains.

Mr. Epstein, of Douglas, offered the following as a substitute for the
whole series :

Whereas, The speedy construction and establishment of railway
communication between the navigable waters of the Pacific and the
mining districts of Nevada, is vitally important to the interests of this
State; therefore, be it

Resolved, By the Assembly, the Senate concurring, That our Senators
be and are hereby instructed, and our Representatives in Congress
requested, to use their utmost endeavors to secure the passage of a law
by Congress, fixing the sum of ten millions of dollars ($10,000, 000,) in
United States Bonds, at dates of thirty years or less, to such corporation
as shall first complete a line of railway and establish the same in perfect
running order, without break or interval of stage transportation, between
the navigable waters of the Sacramento Eiver and the base of the east-
ern slope of the Sierra Nevadas.

Resolved, That his Excellency, the Governor, be requested to transmit
a copy of these resolutions to each of oar Senators and to our Repre-
sentative in Congress, by telegraph.

Mr. Cutter, of Storey, introducer of the original resolutions, accepted
the substitute offered by Mr. Epstein, which, together with that offered
by Mr. Patten, was ordered printed and made the special order for
Wednesday, January eighteenth, at seven p. m.

Wednesday, January 18th.
The substitute resolutions were considered in Committee of the Whole
and made the special order for Tuesday, January twenty-fourth, at seven

P. M.

s Tuesday, January 24th.

The resolutions were again considered in Committee of the Whole,
and the substitute offered by Mr. Patten was laid on the table — ayes, 16;
nays, 14.

A motion to indefinitely postpone the substitute offered by Mi\ Epstein
was lost — ayes, 13 ; nays, 18.

The Epstein resolutions were then made the special order for Friday,
January twenty-seventh, at seven, p. m.

Friday, January 27th.
The resolutions were considered in Committee of the Whole, and made
the special order for Wednesday, February first, at seven, p. m.

Wednesday, February 1st.
The resolutions were again considered in Committee of the Whole,
reported back to the House, ordered engrossed, and made the special
order for Monday, February sixth, at seven, p. m.

24a

226

Monday, February 6th.
The resolutions were considered, and the question being on their pas-
sage, they failed to receive a constitutional vote — ayes, 18; nays, 17; —
the Constitution requiring a majority of all the members elect.

Tuesday, February 7th.
In pursuance of notice given, Mr. Cutter, of Storey, moved to recon-
sider the vote by which they failed to receive a constitutional majority;
which motion prevailed, and the resolutions were made the special order
for Tuesday, February fourteenth, at seven p. m.

Tuesday, February 14.

The resolutions were considered, and the House adjourned, without
action.

Monday, February twentieth, the rules were suspended, resolutions
taken up and made the special order for that evening at seven o'clock;
at which time they were accordingly considered and finally passed —
ayes, 19; noes, 16.

IN SENATE.

Tuesday, February 21, 1865.

The Epstein resolutions were received from the House. A motion
was made to indefinitely postpone, which was lost — ayes, 3; noes, 11.
The resolutions were then made the special order for Monday, February
twenty-seventh, at seven p. M.

Monday, February twenty-seventh, the resolutions were considered
and passed — ayes, 11; noes, 6.

MEMORIAL AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS,

IN REFERENCE TO THE CONSTRUCTION OP A RAILROAD FROM THE CITY
OF VIRGINIA TO THE CITY OF AUSTIN, IN THE STATE OF NEVADA.

To the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives in Co?igress

assembled :

Your memorialists, the Legislature of the State of Nevada, respect-
fully represent to your honorable bodies, that the discovery of large de-
posits of gold, silver and other minerals in the vicinity of Austin, in said
State, and the consequent influx of a large, energetic and thrifty popu-
lation, forming a settlement comprising near one fourth part of the entire
population and present wealth of the State, the sure guarantee from ex-
ploration and present developments of the immeasurable richness and
unbounded extent of these deposits, the unproductiveness of the sur-
rounding country, the value of these mining interests, both to private
speculation and to the National Government, the remoteness of the
place from the commercial metropolis and present mining center of the
State — Yirginia being separated therefrom by a dry, barren and almost
uninhabited and uninhabitable desert of 'two hundred miles in width —
and next to impossible to pass on account of the deep sands and alkali
flats; the consequent exorbitant high price of labor and living; the
necessary delay and extravagant expense in extracting and reducing
the ores; the danger to transmit by animals from hostile tribes of In-
dians who infest these deserts, and the almost entire absence of grass
and water for beasts for a distance of over one hundred and fifty miles;
in the opinion of your memorialists render the building and completion
of a railroad from the city of Yirginia aforesaid, to said city of Austin,
over the present Overland Mail road, as nearly as may be, at the earliest
possible moment, an absolute necessity, demanded alike by the people
of that new region and the country at large.

Wherefore, In consideration of the premises, and the great expense
and outlay requisite in the construction of such an enterprise and road,
your memorialists most earnestly petition your honorable body for a do-
nation, under proper restrictions, of five millions of dollars in aid of such
company, or companies, as shall undertake and complete such enterprise
within the shortest reasonable time; said road, when built, to form a
branch of the great Pacific Eailroad. Therefore, be it

Resolved, by the Senate and Assembly of the State of Nevada, That
our Senators be instructed, and our Eepresentatives in Congress re-

228

quested, to use all and proper exertions and means to procure the above
mentioned aid for the object aforesaid.

Resolved, That his Excellency, the Governor, be requested to forward
to each of our Senators, and to our .Representatives in Congress, a copy
of this memorial and joint resolution, duly authenticated by the great
seal of the State thereto attached.

J. S. CROSMAN,

President of the Senate.

L. B. MOORE,

Secretary of the Senate.

C. W. TOZER,

Speaker of the Assembly.

U. E. ALLEN,

Clerk of the Assembly.

Senate Memorial and Joint Resolutions No. 233, originated February
twenty-fourth, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five.

Passed the Senate March sixth, one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-five.

L. B. MOOEE,

* Secretary of the Senate.

Passed the Assembly March tenth, one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-five.

U. E. ALLEN,

Clerk of the Assembly.

State of Nevada, Department of State, ss.:

I, C. N. Noteware, Secretary of State of the State of Nevada, do hereby
certify that the foregoing is a full, true and correct copy of the original
" Memorial and Joint Resolution in reference to the construction of a
Railroad from the city of Yirginia to the city of Austin, in the State of
Nevada," now on file in my office.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the great

. — « — , seal of the State. Done at the office in Carson City, Nevada,

{ ] on the third day of May, A. D. one thousand eight hundred and

^ SEAL ? • j jy

\ j sixty-five,

ww C. N. NOTEWARE,

Secretary of State.
By Chas. Martin, Deputy.

STATEMENT

I. E. JAMES,

CHIEF ENGINEER OF THE VIRGINIA AND TRUCKEE R. R. CO.

•

STATEMENT

OF THE CHIEF ENGINEER OF THE VIRGINIA AND TRUCKEE RATLROAD

COMPANY.

[The first Nevada Legislature passed a Charter Bill for a railroad from
Virginia City, Storey County, to a point known as Fuller's Crossing, on
the Truekee River. The subjoined statement furnishes the latest results
of surveys on this 'proposed line of railway. The publication of this
body of evidence has been somewhat delayed in order to procure the
information herein afforded, respecting the most important railroad pro-
ject, and the only actually surveyed route for a railroad exclusively
within our State.]

DESCRIPTION OF ROUTE.

The Virginia and Truekee Railroad commences at Taylor on F street,
in Virginia City; passes in a southwesterly direction along F street in
Virginia; passes through Gold Hill directly in front of the mines; pass-
ing through American Flat, it follows the hill side until it strikes the
Washoe Divide; turning at Washoe Divide, it runs northerly by way of
Franktown and Ophir to Washoe city; thence down the outlet of
Washoe Lake to Steamboat Springs; and from thence to Fuller's
Crossing on the Truekee.

DISTANCES.

From.

Total.

Taylor Street, in Virginia City, to the Washoe Divide

Washoe Divide to Washoe City

Washoe City to Steamboat Spring

Steamboat Springs to Fuller's Crossing...

Carson Branch, from Washoe Divide to Carson City.
Length of line from Virginia City to Fuller's Crossing.

Total length of main and branch lines

CHARACTER OF GRADES, CURVES AND WORK.

Maximum grade per mile 70 feet.

Minimum radius of curvature < 500 "

Longest tunnel 1600 "

Total length of tunneling 5085 "

Average grade of curved line, per mile 59 "

232

Heavy work for the first fifteen miles, the cuttings, generally, through
rock. Balance of the distance through sandy country, with little rock-
cutting required.

TIME AND COST OF COMPLETION.

This road could be completed entire in eighteen months, or so soon aa
the iron could be laid on the ground/ if negotiations were commenced
for it immediately.

No close estimates have been made of cost, but it is believed by those
who have the enterprise in charge, that the road can be constructed and
fully stocked and equipped as a first class road for $3,800,000 — at that
cost would undoubtedly be the best paying railroad in the world, not
excepting the Panama railway.

PACIFIC RAILROAD BILLS

PASSED BY

THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

ACTS OF CONGRESS.

| AN ACT to aid in the construction of a Railroad and a Telegraph line from
the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to the Government
the use of the same for Postal, Military and other purposes.

Re it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
I States of America in Congress assembled: That Walter S. Burgess, William
P. Blodget, Benjamin H. Cheever, Charles Fosdick Fletcher of Ehode
J Island; Augustus Brewster, Henry P. Haven, Cornelius S. Bushnell,
Henry Hammond of Connecticut; Isaac Sherman, Dean Richmond, Royal
Phelps, William H. Ferry, Henry A. Paddock, Lewis J. Stancliff, Charles
A. Secor, Samuel R. Campbell, Alfred E. Tilton, John Anderson, Azariah
Boody, John S. Kennedy, H. Carver, Joseph Field, Benjamin F. Camp,
Orville W. Childs, Alexander J. Bergin, Ben Holladav, D. N. Barney, S.
DeWitt Bloodgood, William H. Grant, Thomas W.'Olcott, Samuel B.
Buggies, James B. Wilson of New York; Ephraim Marsh, Charles M.
Harker of New Jersey; John Edgar Thompson, Benjamin Haywood,
Joseph H. Scranton, Joseph Harrison, Geo. W. Cass, John H. Bryant,
Daniel J. Morrill, Thomas M. Howe, William F. Johnson, Robert Finney,
John A. Green, E. R. Myre, Charles F. Wells, junior, of Pennsylvania ;
Noah L. Wilson, Amasa Stone, William H. Clement, S. S. L'Hommedieu,
John Brough, William Dennison, Jacob Blickinsderfer of Ohio; William
M. McPhcrson, R. W. Wells, Willard P. Hall, Armstrong Beatty, John
Corby of Missouri; S. J. Hensley, Peter Donahue, C. P. Huntington, T.
D. Judah, James Bailey, James T. Ryan, Charles Hosmer, Charles
Marsh, D. O. Mills, Samuel Bell, Louis JfcLane, George W. Mowe,
Charles McLaughlin, Timothy Dame, John R. Robinson of California;
John Atchison and John D. Winters of the Territory of Nevada; John
D. Campbell, R. N. Rice, Charles A. Trowbridge and Ransom Gardner,
Charles W. Penny, Charles T. Gorham, William McConnell of Michigan;
William F. Coolbaugh, Lucius H. Langworthy, Hugh T. Reid, Hoyt Sher-
man, Lyman Cook, Samuel R. Curtis, Lewis A. Thomas, Piatt Smith of
Iowa; William B. Ogden, Charles G. Hammond, Henry Farnum, Amos
C. Babcock, W. Seldon Gale, Nehemiah Bushnell and Lorenzo Bull of
Illinois; William H. Swift, Samuel T. Dana, John Bertram, Franklin S.
Stevens, Edward R. Tinker of Massachusetts ; Franklin Gorin, Laban J.
Bradford and John T.Levis of Kentucky; James Dunning, John M.
Wood, Edwin Noyes, Joseph Eaton of Maine; Henry H. Baxter, George
W. Collamer, Henry Keyes, Thomas H. Canfield of Vermont; William
S. Ladd, A. M. Berry, Benjamin F> Harding of Oregon ; William Bunn,
junior, John Catlin, Levi Sterling, John Thompson, Elihu L. Phillips,
Walter D. Mclndoe, T. B. Stoddard, E. H. Brodhead, A. H. Virgin of

236

"Wisconsin ; Charles Paine, Thomas A. Morris, David 0. Branham,
Samuel Hanna, Jonas Votaw, Jesse L. Williams, Isaac C. Elston of j
Indiana; Thomas Swan, Chauncey Brooks, Edward Wilkins of Mary-
land; Francis B. E. Cornell, David Blakely, A. D. Seward, Henry A.
Swift, D wight Woodbury, John McCusick, John B. Jones of Minnesota;
Joseph A. Gilmore, Charles W. Woodman of New Hampshire; W. H.
Grimes, J. C. Stone, Chester Thomas, John Kerr, Werter B. Davis,
Luther C. Chaliss, Josiah Miller of Kansas ; Gilbert C. Monell and
Augustus Kountz, T. M. Marquette, William H. Taylor, Alvin Saunders
of Nebraska; John Evans of Colorado; together with five Commission-
ers to be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, and all persons who
shall or may be associated with them and their successors, are hereby '
created and erected into a body corporate and politic in deed and in law,
by the name, style and title of" The Union Pacific Kailroad Company,"
and by that name shall have perpetual succession, and shall be able to
sue and to be sued, plead and be impleaded, defend and be defended in
all courts of law and equity within the United States, and may make
and have a common seal; and the said corporation is hereby authorized
and empowered to layout, locate, construct, furnish, maintain and enjoy
a continuous railroad and telegraph with the appurtenances, from
a point on the one hundredth meridian of longitude west from Green-
wich, between the south margin of the valley of the Bepublican Biver,
and the north margin of the valley of the Platte Biver, in the Terj
ritory of Nebraska, to the western boundary of Nevada Territ rjj
upon the route and terms hereinafter provided, and is hereby vested
with all the powers, privileges and immunities necessary to carry
into effect the purposes of this Act as herein set forth. The capital
stock of said company shall consist of one hundred thousand shares,
of one thousand dollars each, which shall be subscribed for and held
in not more than two hundred shares by any one person, and shall
be transferable in such manner as the by laws of said corporation
shall provide. The persons hereinbefore named, together with those to
be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, are hereby constituted
and appointed Commissioners, and such body shall be called the Board
of Commissioners of the Union Pacific Bailroad and Telegraph Com- '
pany, and twenty-five shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of
business. The first meeting of said board shall be held at Chicago, at
such time as the Commissioners from Illinois herein named shall appoint,
not more than three nor less than one month after the passage of this
Act, notice of which shall be given by them to the other Commissioners,
by depositing a call thereof in the post office at Chicago, post paid, to
their address, at least forty days before said meeting, and also by pub-
lishing said notice in one daily newspaper in each of the cities of Chicago
and St. Douis. Said board shall organize by the choice, from its num-
ber, of a President, Secretary and Treasurer, and they shall require
from said Treasurer such bonds as may be deemed proper, and may,
from time to time, increase the amount thereof as they may deem
proper. It shall be the duty of said Board of Commissioners to open
books, or cause books to be opened, at such times and in such principal
cities in the United States as they, or a quorum of them, shall determine,
to receive subscriptions to the capital stock of said corporation, and a
cash payment of ten per centum on all subscriptions, and to receipt
therefor. So soon as two thousand shares shall be, in good faith, sub-
scribed for, and ten dollars per share actually paid into the treasury of
the company, the said President and Secretary of said Board of Com-

237

missioners shall appoint a time and place for the first meeting of the
subscribers to the stock of said company, and shall give notice thereof
irrat least one newspaper in each State in which subscription books have
been opened, at least thirty days previous to the day of meeting, and
such subscribers as shall attend the meeting so called, either in person
or by proxy, shall then and there elect by ballot, not less than thirteen
Directors for said corporation ; and in such election each share of said
capital shall entitle the owner thereof to one vote. The President and
Secretary of the Board of Commissioners shall act as inspectors of said
election, and shall certify, under their hands, the names of the Directors
elected at said meeting, and the said Commissioners, Treasurer and Sec-
retary shall then deliver over to said Directors all the properties, sub-
scription books and other books in their possession, and thereupon the
duties of said Commissioners and the officers previously appointed by
them, shall cease and determine forever; and thereafter the stock-
holders shall constitute such body politic and corporate. At the time of
the first and each triennial election of Directors by the stockholders, two
additional Directors shall be appointed by the President of the United
States, who shall act with the body of Directors, and to be denominated
Directors on the part of the Government. Any vacancy happening in
the Government Directors at any time may be filled by the President
of the United States. The Directors to be appointed by the President,
shall not be stockholders in the " Union Pacific Pailroad Company." The
Directors so chosen shall, as soon as may be after their election, elect from
their own number a President and a Vice President, and shall also elect a
Treasurer and Secretary. No person shall be a Director in said company
unless he shall be a bona fide owner of at least five shares of stock in the
said company, except the two Directors to be appointed by the President
as aforesaid. Said company, at any regular meeting of the stockholders
called for that purpose, shall have power to make by-laws, rules and
regulations as they shall deem needful and proper, touching the disposi-
tion of the stock, property, estate and effects of the company, not incon-
sistent herewith, the transfer of shares, the term of office, duties and
conduct of their officers and servants, and all matters whatsoever which
may appertain to the concerns of said company. And the said Board of
Directors shall have power to appoint such engineers, agents and sub-
ordinates as may from time to time be necessary to carry into effect the
object of this Act, and to do all acts and things touching the location
and construction of said road and telegraph. Said Directors may require
payment of subscriptions to the capital stock, after due notice, at such
times and in such proportions as they shall deem necessary to com-
plete the road and telegraph within the time in this Act prescribed.
Said President, Vice President and Directors shall hold their office for
three years, and until their successors are duly elected and qualified, or
for such less time as the by-laws of the corporation may prescribe ; and
a majority of said Directors shall constitute a quorum for the transaction
of business. The Secretary and Treasurer shall give such bonds, with
such security as the said board shall, from time to time, require, and
shall hold their offices at the will and pleasure of the Directors. Annual
meetings of the stockholders of the said corporation for the choice of
officers (when they are to be chosen) and for the transaction of annual
business, shall be holden at.such time and place and upon such notice
as may be prescribed in the by-laws.

Sec. 2. And be it farther enacted, That the right of way through the
public lands be, and the same is hereby granted to said company for

238

the construction of said railroad and telegraph line, and the right, power
and authority is hereby given to said company to take from the public
lands adjacent to the line of said road, earth, stone, timber and other
materials for the construction thereof. Said right of way is granted to
said railroad to the extent of two hundred feet in width on each side of
said railroad, where it may pass over the public lands, including all
necessary grounds for stations, buildings, workshops and depots, machine
shops, switches, side tracks, turn-tables and water stations. The United
States shall extinguish as rapidly as may be the Indian titles to all lands
falling under the operation of this Act, and required for the said right of
way and grants hereinafter made.

Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That there be, and is hereby granted
to the said company, for the purpose of aiding in the construction of said
railroad and telegraph line, and to secure the safe and speedy transpor-
tation of the mails, troops, munitions of war and public stores thereon,
every alternate section of public land designated by odd numbers, to the
amount of five alternate sections per mile on each side of said railroad,
on the line thereof, and within the limits often miles on each side of said
road, not sold, reserved, or otherwise disposed of by the United States,
and to which a preemption or homestead claim may not have attached
at the time the line of said road is definitely fixed; provided, that all
mineral lands shall be excepted from the operation of this Act, but where
the same shall contain timber the timber thereon is hereby granted to
said company, and all such lands so granted by this section which shall
not be sold or disposed of by said company within three years after the
entire road shall have been completed shall be subject to settlement and
preemption like other lands at a price not exceeding one dollar and
twenty-five cents per acre, to be paid to said company.

Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That whenever said company shall
have completed forty consecutive miles of any portion of said railroad
and telegraph line, ready for the service contemplated by the Act, and
supplied with all necessary drains, culverts, viaducts, crossings, sidings,
bridges, turnouts, watering places, depots, equipments, furniture, and all
other appurtenances of a first class railroad, the rails and all the other
iron used in the construction and equipment of said road to be American
manufacture of the best quality, the President of the United States
shall appoint three Commissioners to examine the same, and report to
him in relation thereto; and if it shall appearto him that forty consecu-
tive miles of said railroad and telegraph line have been completed and
equipped in all respects as required by this Act, then upon certificate of
said Commissioners to that effect, patents shall issue conveying the right
and title to said lands to said company, on each side of the road, as far
as the same is completed, to the amount aforesaid; and patents shall in
like manner issue as each forty miles of said railroad and telegraph
line are completed, upon certificate of said Commissioners. Any vacan-
cies occurring in said Board of Commissioners, by death, resignation, Or
otherwise, shall be filled by the President of the United States : Provided,
however, that no such Commissioners shall be appointed by the President
of the United States, unless there shall be presented to him a statement,
verified on oath by the president of said company, that such forty miles
have been completed in the manner required by this Act, and setting
forth with certainty the points where such forty miles begin, and where
the same end, which oath shall be taken before a Judge of a Court of
Eecord.

Sec. 5. And be it further enacted, That for the purposes herein men-

239

tioned, the Secretary of the Treasury shall, upon the certificate, in -writ-
ing, of said Commissioners, of the completion and equipment of forty
consecutive miles of said railroad and telegraph, in accordance with the
provisions of this Act, issue to said company bonds of the United States,
of one thousand dollars each, payable in thirty years after date, bearing
six per centum per annum interest, (said'interest payable semi-annually)
which interest may be paid in the United States treasury notes, or any
other money or currency which the United States have, or shall declare,
lawful money, and a legal tender to the amount of sixteen of said bonds
per mile for such section of forty miles. And to secure the re-payment
to the United States as hereinafter provided, of the amount of said bonds,
so issued and delivered to said company, together with all interest
thereon which shall have been paid by the United States, the issue of
said bonds and delivery to the company shall, ipso facto, constitute a
first mortgage on the whole line of the railroad and telegraph, together
with the rolling stock, fixtures and property of every kind and descrip-
tion, and in consideration of which, said bonds may be issued; and on
the refusal or failure of said company to redeem said bonds, or any part
of them, when required so to do by the Secretary of the Treasury, in
accordance with the provisions of this Act, the said road, with all the
rights, functions, immunities and appurtenances thereunto belonging,
and also all lands granted to the said company by the United States,
which, at the time of said default shall remain in the ownership of the
said company, may be taken possession of by the Secretary of the Treas-
ury for the use and benefit of the United States; provided, this section
shall not apply to that part of any road now constructed.

Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That the grants aforesaid are made
upon condition that said company shall pay said bonds at maturity, and
shall keep said railroad and telegraph line in repair and use, and shall at
all times transmit dispatches over said telegraph line, and transport mails,
troops, and munitions of war, supplies and public stores, upon said rail-
road for the government, whenever required to do so by any department
thereof, and that the government shall at all times have the preference
in the use of the same for all the purposes aforesaid, (at fair and reason-
able rates of compensation, not to exceed the amounts paid by private
parties for the same kind of service,) and all compensation for services
rendered for the government, shall be applied to the payment of said
bonds and interest, until the whole amount is fully paid. Said company
may also pay the United States, wholly or in part, in the same or other
bonds, treasury notes, or other evidences of debt against the United
States, to be allowed at par; and after said road is completed, until said
bonds and interest are paid, at least five per centum of the net earnings
of said road shall also be annually applied to the payment thereof.

Sec. 7. And be it further enacted, That said company shall file their
assent to this Act, under the seal of said company; in the Department of
the Interior, within one year after the passage of this Act, and shall
complete said railroad and telegraph from the point of beginning, as
herein provided, to the western boundary of Nevada Territory, before
the first day of July, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-four; pro-
vided, that within two years after the passage of this Act said company
shall designate the general route of said road, as near as may be, and
shall file a map of the same in the Department of the Interior; where-
upon the Secretary of the Interior shall cause the land within fifteen
miles of said designated route, or routes, to be withdrawn from preemp-
tion, private entry and sale; and when any portion of said route shall

240

be finally located the Secretary of the Interior shall cause the said lands
hereinbefore granted to be surveyed and set off as fast as may be neces-
sary, for the purposes herein named; provided, that in fixing the point
of connection, of the main trunk with the eastern connections, it shall be
fixed at the most practicable point for the construction of the Iowa and
Missouri branches, as hereinafter provided.

Sec. 8. And be it farther enacted, That the line of said railroad and tel-
egraph shall commence at a point on the one hundredth meridian of longi-
tude west from Greenwich, between the south margin of the valley of
the Republican River, and the north margin of the vallej^ of the Platte
River, in the Territory of Nebraska, at a point fixed by the President of
the United States, after actual surveys; thence running westerly upon
the most direct, central and practicable route thi'ough the Territories of
the United States to the western boundary of the Territory of Nevada,
thence to meet and connect with the line of the Central Pacific Railroad
Company of California.

Sec. 9. And be it further enacted, That the Leavenworth, Pawnee and
"Western Railroad Company, of Kansas, are hereby authorized to con-
struct a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri River, at the
mouth of the Kansas river, on the south side thereof, so as to connect
with the Pacific Railroad of Missouri, to the aforesaid point, on the one
hundredth meridian of longitude west from Greenwich, as herein pro-
vided, upon the same terms and conditions, in all respects, as are pro-
vided in this Act, for the construction of the railroad and telegraph line
first mentioned, and to meet and connect with the same at the meridian
of longitude aforesaid; and in case the general route, or line of road
from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, should be so located as
to require a departure northwardly from the proposed line of said Kan-
sas Railroad before it reaches the meridian of longitude afoi'esaid, the
location of the said Kansas road shall be made so as to conform thereto;
and said railroad through Kansas shall be so located between the mouth
of the Kansas River, as aforesaid, and the aforesaid point on the one
hundredth meridian of longitude, that the several railroads from Mis-
souri and Iowa, herein authorized to connect with the same, can make
connection within the limits prescribed in this Act; provided, that the
same can be done without deviating from the general direction of the
whole line to the Pacific coast. The route in Kansas, west of the meri-
dian of Fort Riley, to the aforesaid point on the one hundredth meridian
of longitude, to be subject to the approval of the President of the United
States, and to be determined by him on actual survey. And said Kan-
sas Company may proceed to build said railroad to the aforesaid point
on the one hundredth meridian of longitude west from Greenwich, in the
Territory of Nebraska. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of Cali-
fornia, a corporation existing under the laws of the State of California,
are hereby authorized to construct a railroad and telegraph line from
the Pacific coast, at or near San Francisco, or the navigable waters of
the Sacramento River, to the eastern boundary of California, upon the
same terms and conditions, in all respects, as are contained in this Act
for the construction of said railroad and telegraph line first mentioned,
and to meet and connect with the first mentioned railroad and telegraph
line on the eastern boundary of California. Each of said companies shall
file their acceptance of the conditions of this Act in the Department of
the Interior within six months after the passage of this Act.

Sec. 10. And be it further enacted, That the said company chartered
by the State of Kansas, shall complete one hundred miles of their said

241

road, commencing at the mouth of the Kansas Eiver as aforesaid, within
two years after filing their assent to the conditions of this Act as herein
provided, and one hundred miles per year thereafter, until the whole is
completed; and the said Central Pacific Eailroad Company of California
shall complete fifty miles of their road within two years after filing
their assent to the provisions of this Act as herein provided; and fifty
miles per year thereafter, until the whole is completed. And after com-
pleting their roads respectively, said companies, or either of them, may
unite upon equal terms with the first named company in constructing
so much of said railroad and telegraph line, and branch railroads and
telegraph lines in this Act hereinafter mentioned, through the territories
from the State of California to the Missouri Eiver, as shall then remain
to be constructed, on the same terms and conditions as provided in
this Act, in relation to the said Union Pacific Eailroad Company.
And the Hannibal and St. Joseph Eailroad, the Pacific Eailroad Com-
pany of Missouri, and the first named company, or either of them, on
filing their assent to this Act as aforesaid, may unite upon equal terms
under this Act, with the said Kansas company, in constructing said rail-
road and telegraph to said meridian of longitude, with the consent of
the said State of Kansas; and in case said first named company shall
complete their line to the eastern boundary of California, before it is
completed across said State by the Central Pacific Eailroad Company of
California, said first named company is hereby authorized to continue in
constructing the same through California, with the consent of said State,
upon the terms mentioned in this Act, until said road shall meet and
connect, and the whole line of said railroad and telegraph is completed ;
and the Central Pacific Eailroad Company of California, after complet-
ing its road across said State is authorized to continue the construction
of said railroad and telegraph through the territories of the United
States to the Missouri Eiver, including the branch road specified in this
Act, upon the routes hereinbefore and hereinafter indicated, on the
terms and conditions provided in this Act in relation to the said Union
Pacific Eailroad Company, until said roads shall meet and connect, and
the whole line of said railroad and branches and telegraph is completed.
Sec. 11. And be it further enacted, That for three hundred miles of
said road, most mountainous and difficult of construction, to wit: one
hundred and fifty miles westwardly from the eastern base of the Eocky
Mountains, and one hundred and fifty miles eastwardly from the western
base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, said points to be fixed by the
President of the United States, the bonds to be issued to aid in the con-
struction thereof, shall be treble the number per mile hereinbefore pro-
vided, and the same shall be issued and the lands herein granted set apart,
upon the construction of every twenty miles thereof, upon the certificate
of the Commissioners as aforesaid, that twenty consecutive miles of the
same are completed; and between the sections last named of one hun-
dred and fifty miles each, the bonds to be issued to aid in the construc-
tion thereof, shall be double the number per mile first mentioned, and the
same shall be issued and the lands herein granted be set apart, upon the
construction of every twenty miles thereof, upon the certificate of the
Commissioners as aforesaid, that twenty consecutive miles of the same
are completed; provided, that no more than fifty thousand of said bonds
shall be issued under this Act, to aid in constructing the main line of
said railroad and telegraph.

Sec. 12. And be it further enacted, That whenever the route of said
railroad shall cross the boundary of any State or Territory, or said meri-
2oa

242

dian of longitude, the two companies meeting, or uniting there, shall
agree upon its location at that point, with reference to the most direct
and practicable through route; and in case of difference between them
as to said location, the President of the United States shall determine
the said location; the companies named in each State and Territory to
locate the road across the same, between the points so agreed upon, ex-
cept as herein provided. The track upon the entire line of railroad and
branches shall be of uniform width, to be determined by the President
of the United States, so that when completed cars can be run from the
Missouri River to the Pacific coast; the grades and curves shall not ex-
ceed the maximum gi\adcs and curves of the Baltimore and Ohio Kail-
road; the whole line of said railroad and branches and telegraph shall
be operated and used for all purposes of communication, travel and
transportation, so far as the public and Government are concerned, as
one connected, continuous line; and the companies herein named in
Missouri, Kansas and California filing their assent to the provisions of j
this Act, shall receive and transport all iron rails, chairs, spikes, ties, tim-
ber and all materials required for constructing and furnishing said first
mentioned line between the aforesaid point on the one hundredth meri-
dian of longitude and western boundary of Nevada Territory whenever
the same is required by said first named company, at cost, over that
portion of the roads of said companies constructed under the provisions
of this Act.

Sec. 13. And be it further enacted, That the Hannibal and St. Joseph
Railroad Company, of Missouri, may extend its road from St. Joseph,
via Atchison, to connect and unite with the road through Kansas, upon
filing its assent to the provisions of this Act, upon the same terms and
conditions, in all respects, for one hundred miles in length, next to the
Missouri River, as are provided in this Act for the construction of the
railroad and telegraph line first mentioned, and may for this purpose use
any railroad charter which has been, or may be granted by the Legisla-
ture of Kansas; provided, That if actual survey shall render it desirable,
the said company may construct their road with the consent of the Kan-
sas Legislature on the most direct and practicable route west from St.
Joseph, Missouri, so as to connect and unite with the road leading from
the western boundary of Iowa, at any point east of the one hundredth
meridian of west longitude, or with the main trunk road at said point;
but in no event shall lands or bonds be given to said compairy, as herein
directed, to aid in the construction of their said road for a greater dis-
tance than one hundred miles. And the Leavenworth, Pawnee and
Western Railroad Compan}r, of Kansas, may construct their road from
Leavenworth, to unite with a road through Kansas.

Sec. 14. And be it further enacted, That the said Union Pacific Rail-
road Company is hereby authorized and required to construct a single
line of railroad and telegraph from a point on the western boundary of
the State of Iowa, to be fixed by the President of the United States,
upon the most direct and practicable route, to be subject to his approval,
so as to form a connection with the lines of said company at some point
on the one hundredth meridian of longitude aforesaid, from the point of
commencement on the western boundary of the State of Iowa, upon the
eame terms and conditions in all respects as are contained in this Act,
for the construction of the said railroad and telegraph first mentioned;
and the said Union Pacific Railroad Company shall complete one hund-
red miles of the road and telegraph in this section provided for, in two
years after filing their assent to the conditions of this Act, as by the

243

terms of this Act required, and at the rate of one hundred miles per
year thereafter until the whole is completed; provided, that a failure
tipon the part of said company to make said connection in the time
aforesaid, and to perform the obligations imposed on said company by
this section, and to operate said road in the same manner as the main
line shall be operated, shall forfeit to the Government of the United
States, all the rights, privileges and franchises granted to and conferred
upon said company by this Act. And whenever there shall be a lino of
road completed through Minnesota or Iowa to Sioux City, then the said
Pacific Railroad Company is hereby authorized and required to construct
a railroad and telegraph line from said Sioux City, upon the most dh-ect
and practicable route, to a point on and so as to connect with the branch
railroad and telegraph in this section hereinbefore mentioned, or with
the said Union Pacific Railroad. Said point of junction to be fixed by
the President of the United States, not further west than the one hund-
redth meridan of longitude aforesaid, and on the same terms and condi-
tions as provided in this Act for the construction of the Union Pacific
Railroad as aforesaid, and to complete the same at the rate of one hund-
red miles per year; and should said company fail to comply with the
requirements of this Act in relation to the said Sioux Citj Railroad and
Telegraph, the said company shall suffer the same forfeitures prescribed
in relation to the Iowa branch railroad and telegraph hereinbefore men-
tioned.

Sec 15. And be it further enacted, That any other railroad company
now incorporated or hereafter to be incorporated, shall have the right
to connect their road with the road and branches provided for by this
Act, at such places and upon such just and equitable terms as the Presi-
dent of the United States may prescribe. Wherever the word " com-
pany" is used in this Act, it shall be construed to embrace the words
" their associates, successors, assigns," the same as if the words had
been properly added thereto.

Sec. 16. And be it farther enacted, That at any time after the passage
of this Act, all of the railroad companies named herein and assenting
hereto, or any two or more of them, are authorized to form themselves
into one consolidated company; notice of such consolidation in writing
shall be filed in the Department of the Interior, and such consolidated
company shall thereafter proceed to construct said railroad and branches
and telegraph line, upon the terms and conditions provided in this Act.

Sec. if. And be it further enacted, That in case said company or com-
panies shall fail to comply with the terms and conditions of this Act, by
not completing said road and telegraph, and branches, within a reason-
able time, or by not keeping the same in repair and use, but shall permit
the same, for an unreasonable time, to remain unfinished or out of repair
and unfit for use, Congress ma}' pass an Act to insure the speedy com-
pletion of said road and branches, or put the same in repair and use,
and may direct the income of said railroad and telegraph line to be
thereafter devoted to the use of the United States, to pajr all such ex-
penditures caused by the default or neglect of such company or compa-
nies; provided, that if said roads are not completed so as to form a con-
tinuous line of railroad ready for use, from the Missouri River to the
navigable waters of the Sacramento River, in California, by the first day
of July, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six, the whole of said
railroads before mentioned and to be constructed under the provisions of
this Act, together with all the furniture, fixtures, rolling stock, machine
shops, lands, tenements and hereditaments, and property of every

kind and character, shall be forfeited to and taken possession of by the
United States; provided, that if the bonds of the United States, in this
Act provided to be delivered for any and all parts of the road to be con-
structed east of the one hundredth meridian of west longitude from
Greenwich, and for any part of the road west of the west foot of the
Sierra Mountains, there shall be reserved of each part an installment
twenty-five per centum to be and remain in the United States treasury
undelivered until said road, and all parts thereof, provided for in this
Act are entirely completed ; and of all the bonds provided to be deliv-
ered for the said road between the two points aforesaid, there shall be
reserved out of each installment fifteen per centum, to be and remain in
the treasury until the whole of the road provided for in this Act is fully
completed; and if the said road, or any part thereof, shall fail of com-
pletion at the time limited therefor in this Act, then and in that case the
said part of said bonds so reserved shall be forfeited to the United
States.

Sec. 18. And be it further enacted, That whenever it appears that the
net earnings of the entire road and telegraph, including the amount
allowed for services rendered for the United States, after deducting all
expenditures, including repairs and the furnishing, running and man-
aging of said road, shall exceed ten per centum upon its cost, exclusive
of the five per centum to be paid to the United States, Congress may
reduce the rates of fare thereon, if unreasonable in amount, and may
fix and establish the same by law. And the better to accomplish the
object of this Act, viz : to promote the public interest and welfare by
the construction of said railroad and telegraph line, and keeping the
same in working order, and to secure to the Government at all times, (but
particularly in time of war,) the use and benefits of the same for postal,
military and other purposes, Congress may at any time, having due
regard for the rights of said companies named herein, add to, alter,
amend or repeal this Act.

Sec. 19. And be it further enacted, That the several railroad compa-
nies herein named are authorized to enter into an arrangement with
the Pacific Telegraph Company, the Overland Telegraph Company, and
the California State Telegraph Company, so that the present line of
telegraph between the Missouri River and San Francisco may be moved
upon or along the line of said railroad and branches as fast as said roads
and branches are built; and if said arrangement be entered into, and
the transfer of said telegraph line be made in accordance therewith to
the line of said railroad and branches, such transfer shall, for all pur-
poses of this Act, be held and considered a fulfilment on the part of said
railroad companies, of the provisions of this Act, in regard to the con-
struction of said line of telegraph. And in case of disagreement, said
telegraph companies are authorized to remove their line of telegraph
along and upon the line of railroad herein contemplated without preju-
dice to the rights of said railroad companies named herein.

Sec. 20. And be it further enacted, That the corporation hereby created
and the roads connected therewith, under the provisions of this Act,
shall make to the Secretary of the Treasury an annual report, wherein
shall be set forth ; first — The names of the stockholders and their places
of residence, so far as the same can be ascertained ; second — The names
and residences of the Directors and all other officers of the companj'-;
third — The amount of stock subscribed and the amount thereof actually
paid in; fourth — A description of the lines of road surveyed of the
lines thereof fixed upon for the construction of the road and the cost

245

of such surveys ; fifth — The amount received from passengers on the
road; sixth — The amount received for freight thereon; seventh — A
statement of the expenses of said road and its fixtures; eighth — A state-
ment of the indebtedness of said company, setting forth the various kinds
thereof. Which report shall be sworn to by the President of the said
company and shall be presented to the Secretary of the Treasury on or
before the first day of July in each year.
Approved July 1, 1862.

AN ACT to amend an Act entitled "An Act to aid in the construction of a
Railroad and Telegraph Line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean,
and to secure to the Government the use of the same for postal, military and
other purposes" approved July first, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
two.

Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the capital stock
of the company entitled the Union Pacific Railroad Company, authorized
by the Act of which this Act is amendatory, shall be in shares of one
hundred dollars instead of one thousand dollars each ; that the number
of shares shall be one million instead of one hundred thousand ; and that
the number of shares which any person shall hold to entitle him to serve
as a Director in said company (except the five Directors to be appointed
by Government), shall be fifty shares instead of five shares; and that
every subscriber to said capital stock for each share of one thousand
dollars, heretofore subscribed, shall be entitled to a certificate for ten
shares of one hundred dollars each ; and that the following words in sec-
tion first of said Act : "Which shall be subscribed for and held in not
more than two hundred shares by any one person," be, and the same are
hereby repealed.

Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That the Union Pacific Railroad
Company shali cause books to be kept open to receive subscriptions to
the capital stock of said company (until the entire capital of one hundred
million dollars shall be subscribed), at the general office of said company
in the city of New York, and in each of the cities of Boston, Philadel-
phia, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and at such places as may
be designated by the President of the United States, and in such other
localities as may be directed by him. No subscription for said stock
shall be deemed valid unless the subscriber therefor shall, at the time of
subscribing, pay, or remit to the Treasurer of the company, an amount
per share subscribed by him equal to the amount per share previously
paid by the then existing stockholders. The said company shall make
assessments upon its stockholders of not less than five dollars per share,
and at intervals of not exceeding six months from and after the passage
of this Act, until the par value of all shares subscribed shall be fully
paid. Any money only shall be receivable for any such assessment, or
as equivalents for any portion of the capital stock hereinbefore author-
ized. The capital stock of said company shall not be increased beyond
the actual cost of said road. And the stock of the company shall be
deemed personal property, and shall be transferable on the books of the
compan}' at the general office of said company, in the city of New York,
or at such other transfer office as the company may establish.

246

Sec. 3. And be it further enacted, That the Union Pacific Eailroad
Company, and all other companies provided for in this Act, and the Act
to which this is an amendment, be, and hereby are, empowered to enter
upon, purchase, take and hold any lands or premises that may be neces-
sary and proper for the construction and working of said road, not ex-
ceeding in width one hundred feet on each side of its center line, unless
a greater width is required for the purpose of excavation or embankment;
and also any lands or premises that may be necessary and proper for
turnouts, standing places for cars, depots, station bouses, or any other
structures required in the construction and operating of said road. And
each of said companies shall have the right to cut and remove trees or
other materials that might, by falling, encumber its road bed, though
standing or being more than one hundred feet therefrom; and in case
the owner or claimant of such lands or premises and such company can-
not agree as to the damage, the amount shall be determined by the ap-
praisal of three disinterested commissioners, who may be appointed upon
application by any party to any judge of a court of record in any of the
territories in which the lands or premises to be taken lie; and said com-
missioners, in their assessment of damages, shall appraise such premises
at what would have been the value thereof if the road had not been
built; and upon return into court of such appraisement, and upon the
payment to the clerk thereof of the amount so awarded by the commis-
sioners, for the use and benefit thereof, said premises shall be deemed to
be taken by said company, which sball thereby acquire full title to the
same, for the purposes aforesaid. And either party feeling aggrieved by
said assessment, may, within thirty days, file an appeal therefrom, and
demand a jury of twelve men to estimate the damage sustained ; but
such appeal shall not interfere with the rights of said company to enter
upon the premises taken, or to do any act necessary in the construction
of its road; and said party appealing shall give bonds, with sufficient
surety or sureties for the payment of any costs that may arise upon such
appeal. And in case the party appealing does not obtain a more favora-
ble verdict, such party shall pay the whole cost incurred by the appellee,
as well as his own. And the payment into court, for the use of the
owner or claimant, of a sum equal to that finally awarded, shall be held
to vest in said company the title of said land, and the right to use and
occupy the same, for the construction, maintaining and operating of the
road of said company. And in case any of the lands be taken as afore-
said, shall be held by any person residing without the territory, or sub-
ject to any legal disability, the court may appoint a proper person, who
shall give bonds with sufficient surety or sureties, for the faithful execu-
tion of his trust, and who may represent in court the person disqualified
or absent as aforesaid, when the same proceeding shall be had in refer-
ence to the appraisement of the premises to be taken, and with the same
effect as have been already described. And the title of the company to
the land taken by virtue of this Act, shall not be affected nor impaired
6-y reason of any failure, by any guardian, to discharge faithfully his
tf ust, and in case it shall be necessary for either of the said companies
to enter upon lands which are unoccupied, and of which there is no ap-
parent owner or claimant, it may proceed to take and use the same for
the purpose of its said railroad, and may institute proceedings in manner
described for the purpose of ascertaining the value of, and acquiring a
title to, the same ; and the court may determine the kind of notice to be
served on such owner or owners in the case of his or their incapacity or
non-appearance. But in case no claimant shall appear within six years

247

from the time of the opening of said road across any land, all claim to
damages against said company shall be barred. It shall be competent
for the legal guardian of any infant, or any other person under guardian-
ship, to agree with the proper company as to damages sustained by rea-
son of the taking of any lands of an3' such person under disability as
aforesaid; and upon such agreement being made and approved by the
court having supervision of the official acts of said guardian, the said
guardian shall have full power to make and execute a conveyance thereof
to the said company which shall vest the title thereto in the said com-
pany.

Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That section three of said Act be
hereby amended by striking out the word "five," where the same occurs
in said section, and by inserting in lieu thereof the word "ten ;" and by
striking out the word "ten," where the same occurs in said section, and
inserting in lieu thereof the word "twenty." And section seven of said
Act is hereby amended by striking out the word "fifteen," where the
same occurs in said section, and inserting in lieu thereof the word
" twentj'-five." And the term " mineral land," wherever the same oc-
curs in this Act, and the Act to which this is an amendment, shall not
be construed, to include coal and iron land. And any lands granted by
this Act, or the Act to which this is an amendment, shall not defeat or
impair any preemption, homestead, swamp land or other lawful claim,
nor include any Government reservation or mineral lands, or the im-
provements of any bona fide settler on any lands returned and denomi-
nated as mineral lands, and the timber necessary to support his said im-
provements as a miner or agriculturist, to bo ascertained under such
rules as have been, or may be established by the Commissioner of
the Genei'al Land Office, in conformity with the provisions of the Pre-
emption Law; provided, That the quantity thus exempted by the opera-
tion of this Act, and the Act to which this is an amendment, shall not
exceed one hundred and sixty acres for each settler who claims as an
agriculturist, and such quantity for each settler who claims as a miner,
as the said Commissioner may establish by general regulation; provided,
also, that the phrase, " but where the same shall contain timber the tim-
ber thereon is hereby granted to said company," in the proviso to said
section three, shall not apply to the timber growing, or being on any
land further than ten miles from the center line of any of said roads or
branches mentioned in said Act or in this Act. And all lands shall be
excluded from the operation of this Act, and of the Act to which this is
an amendment, which were located or selected to be located under the
provisions of an Act entitled "An Act donating lands to the several
States and Territories which may provide Colleges for the benefit of
Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts," approved July second, one thou-
sand eight hundred and sixty-two, and notice thereof given at the proper
Land Office.

Sec. 5. And be it further enacted, That the time for designating the
general route of said railroad, and of filing the map of the same, and the
time for the completion of that part of the railroads required by the
terms of said Act of each company, be, and the same is hereby extended
one year from the time in said Act designated, and that the Central
Pacific Eailroad Company of California shall be required to complete
twent3'-five miles of their said road in each year thereafter, and the
whole to the State line within four years, and that only one half the
compensation for services rendered for the Government by said com

248

panics, shall be required to be applied to the payment of the bonds is-
sued by the Government in aid in the construction of said roads.

Sec. 6. And be it further enacted, That the proviso to section four of
said Act is hereby modified, as follows, viz: And the President of the
United States is hereby authorized, at any time after the passage of this
Act, to appoint for each and every of said roads, three Commissioners
as provided for in the Act to which this Act is amendatory; and the
verified statement of the President of the California Company, required
by said section four, shall be filed in the office of the United States Sur-
veyor General for the State of California, instead of being presented to
the President of the United States; and the said SurvejTor General shall,
thereupon, notify the said Commissioners of the filing of such state-
ment, and the said Commissioners shall thereupon proceed to examine
the portion of said railroad and telegraph line so completed, and make
their report thereon to the President of the United States, as provided
by the Act of which this is amendatory. And such statement may be
filed, and such railroad and telegraph line be examined and reported on
by the said Commissioners, and the requisite amount of bonds may be
issued, and the lands appertaining thereto may be set apart, located and
patented, as provided in this Act and the Act to which this is amenda-
tory, upon the construction by said railroad company of California, of
any portion of not less than twenty consecutive miles of their said rail-
road and telegraph line, upon the certificate of said Commissioners that
said portion is completed as required by the Act to which this is amend-
atory. And section ten of the Act to which this is amendatory is hereby
amended, by inserting after the words, "United States," in the last
clause, the words, "the States intervening."

Sec. 7. And be it further enacted, That so much of section seventeen
of said Act as provides for a reservation by the Government of a portion
of the bonds to be issued to aid in the construction of the said railroads
is hereby repealed. And the failure of any one company to comply
fully with the conditions and requirements of this Act, or the Act to
which this is amendatory, shall not work a forfeiture of the rights,
privileges or franchise of any other company or companies that shall
have complied with the same.

Sec 8. And be it further enacted, That for the purpose of facilitating
the work on said railroad, and enabling the said company as early as
practicable to commence the grading of said railroad in the region of the
mountains, between the eastern base of the Eocky Mountains and the
western base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, so that the same may be
finally completed within the time required by law, it is hereby provided
that whenever the chief engineer of the said company, and said Com-
missioners shall certify that a certain portion of the work required to
prepare the road for the superstructure on any such section of twenty
miles is done (which said certificate shall be duly verified), the Secre-
tary of the Treasury is hereby authorized and required, upon the deliv-
ery of such certificate, to issue to said company a proportion of said
bonds, not exceeding two thirds of the amount of bonds authorized to
be issued under the provisions of the Act to aid in the construction of
such section of twenty miles, nor in any case exceeding two thirds of
the value of the work done, the remaining one third to remain until the
said section is fully completed, and certified by the Commissioners ap-
pointed by the President, according to the terms and provisions of the
said Act; and no such bonds shall issue to the Union Pacific Railroad
Company for work done west of Salt Lake City under this section, more^

249

than three hundred miles in advance of the completed 'continuous line
of said railroad from the point of beginning, on the one hundredth me-
ridian of longitude.

Sec. 9. And be it farther enacted, That to enable any one of the said
corporations to make convenient and necessary connections with other
roads, it is hereby authorized to establish and maintain all necessary
ferries upon and across the Missouri Eiver, and other rivers, which its
road may pass in its course; and authority is hereby given said corpora-
tion to construct bridges over said Missouri Eiver, and all other rivers,
for the convenience of said road; provided, that any bridge or bridges it
may construct over the Missouri Eiver, or any other navigable river, on
the line of said road, shall be constructed with suitable and proper draws
for the passage of steamboats, and shall be built, kept and maintained
at the expense of said company, in such manner as not to impair the
usefulness of said rivers for navigation to any greater extent than such
structures of the most approved character necessarily do; and provided,
further, that any company authorized in this Act to construct its road
and telegraph line from the Missouri Eiver to the initial point aforesaid,
may construct its road and telegraph line so as to connect with the
Union Pacific Eailroad at any point westwardly of such initial point, in
case such company shall deem such westward connection more practica-
ble, or desirable; and in aid of the construction of so much of its road
and telegraph line as shall be a departure from the route hereinbefore
provided for its road, such company shall be entitled to all the benefits
and be subject to all the conditions and restrictions of this Act; provided^
further, however, that the bonds of the United States shall not be issued
to such company for a greater amount than is hereinbefore provided, if
the same had united with the Union Pacific Eailroad on the one hun-
dredth degree of longitude, nor shall such company be entitled to re-
ceive any greater amount of alternate sections of public land than are
also herein provided.

Sec. 10. And be it further enacted, That section five of said Act be so
modified and amended that the Union Pacific Eailroad Company, the
Central Pacific Eailroad Company, and any other Company authorized
to participate in the construction of said road may, on the completion of
each section of said road, as provided in this Act, and the Act to which
this Act is an amendment, issue their first mortgage bonds on their re-
spective railroad and telegraph lines, to an amount not exceeding the
amount of the bonds of the United States, and of even tenor and date,
time of maturity, rate and character of interest with the bonds author-
ized to be issued to said railroad companies respectively. And the lien
of the United States bonds shall be subordinate to that of the bonds of
any or either of said companies hereby authorized to be issued on their
respective roads, property and equipments, except as to the provisions of
the sixth section of the Act, to which this Act is an amendment, relating
to the transmission of dispatches and the transportation of mails, troops,
munitions of war, supplies and public stores, for the Government of the
United States. And said section is further amended by striking out the
word "forty," and inserting in lieu thereof the words, " on each and
every section of not less than twenty."

Sec. 11. And be it further enacted, That if any of the railroad compa-
nies entitled to the bonds of the United States, or to issue their first
mortgage bonds herein provided for, has, at the time of the approval of
this Act, issued, or shall thereafter issue, any of its own bonds or securi-
ties in such form and manner as in law or equity to entitle the same to

250

priority or preference of payment to the said guaranteed bonds, or said
first mortgage bonds, the amount of such corporate bonds outstanding
and unsatisfied, or uncancelled, shall be deducted from the amount of
such Government and first mortgage bonds which the company may be
entitled to receive and issue ; and such an amount only of such Govern-
ment bonds and such first mortgage bonds shall be granted or permitted
as added to such outstanding, unsatisfied or uncancelled bonds of tho
company shall make up the whole amount per mile to which the com-
pany would otherwise have been entitled. And, provided further, That
before any bonds shall be so given by the United States, the company
claiming them shall present to the Secretary of the Treasury an affidavit
of the President and the Secretary of the company, to be sworn to be-
fore the judge of a cpurt of record, setting forth whether said company
has issued any such bonds or securities, and if so, particularly describing
the same, and such other evidence as the Secretary may require, so as to'
enable him to make the deduction herein required; and such affidavit
shall then be filed and deposited in the office of the Secretary of the In-
terior, and any person swearing falsely to any such affidavit, shall be
deemed guilty of perjury, and on conviction thereof shall be punished
as aforesaid ; provided, also, That no land granted by this Act shall be
conveyed to any party or parties, and no bonds shall bo issued to any
company or companies, party or parties, on account of any road or part
thereof, made prior to the passage of the Act' to which this Act is aa
amendment, or made subsequent thereto, under the provisions of any
Act or Acts other than this Act and the Act amended by this Act.

Sec. 12. And be it further enacted, That the Leavenworth, Pawnee and
Western .Railroad Company, now known as the Union Pacific Railroad
Company, eastern division shall build the railroad from tho mouth of
the Kansas River, by the way of Leavenworth, or if that be not deemed
the best route, then the said company shall, within two years, buiid a
railroad from the cit}' of Leavenworth to unite with the main stem at or .
near the city of Lawrence; but to aid in the construction of said branch
the said company shall not be entitled to any bonds. And if the Union
Pacific Railroad Company shall not be proceeding in good faith to build
the said railroad through the Territories, when the Leavenworth, Paw-
nee and Western Railroad Company, now known as the Union Pacific
Railroad Company, eastern division, shall have completed their road to
the one hundredth degree of longitude, then the last named company
may proceed to make said road westward until it meets and connects
with the Central Pacific Railroad Company on the same line. And the
said railroad, from the mouth of Kansas River to the one hundredth
meridian of longitude, shall be made by the way of Lawrence and Topeka,
or on the bank of the Kansas River, opposite said town ; provided, that
no bonds shall be issued, or lands certified by the United States, to any
person or company for the construction of any part of the main trunk
line of said railroad west of the one hundredth meridian of longitude, and
east of the Rocky mountains, until said road shall be completed from, or
near Omaha, on the Missouri l*tiver, to the said one hundredth meridian
of longitude.

Sec. 13. And be it further enacted, That at and after the next election
of Directors, the number of Directors to be elected by the stockholders
shall be fifteen; and the number of Directors to be appointed by the
President shall be five; and the President shall appoint three additional
Directors to serve until the next regular election, and thereafter five
Directors. At least one of said Government Directors shall be placed on

251

each one of the standing committees of saul company, and at least one
on every special committee that may be appointed. The Government
Directors shall, from time to time, report to the Secretary of the Interior
in answer to any inquiries he might make of them touching the condi-
tion, management and progress of the work, and shall communicate to
the Secretary of the Interior, at any time, such information as should be
in the possession of the Department. They shall, as often as may be
necessary to a full knowledge of the condition and management of the
line, visit all portions of the line of road, whether built or surveyed, and
while absent from home attending to their duties as Directors, shall be
paid their actual traveling expenses, and bo allowed and paid such rea-
sonable compensation for their time actually employed, as the Board of
Directors may decide.

Sec. 14. And be it further enacted, That the next election for directors
of said railroad, shall be held on the first Wednesday of October next,
at the office of said company, in the city of New York, between the
hours of ten o'clock, a. m., and four o'clock p. m. of said day; and all
subsequent regular elections shall be held annually thereafter, at the
same place; and the directors shall hold their offices for one year, and
until their successors are qualified.

Sec. 15. And be it further enacted, That the several companies author-
ized to construct the aforesaid mads, are hereby required to operate and
use said roads and telegraph for all purposes of communication, travel
and transportation, so far as the public and the Government are con-
cerned, as one continuous line; and in such operation and use to afford
and secure to each equal advantages and facilities, as to rates, time and
transportation, without any discrimination of any kind in favor of the
road or business of any or eitherof said companies, or adverse totheroad
or business of any or either of the others, and it shall not be lawful for the
proprietors of any line of telegraph authorized by this Act, or the Act
amended by this Act, to refuse or fail to convey for all persons requiring
the transmission of news and messages of like character, on pain of for-
feiting to the person injured for each offense the sum of one hundred
dollars, and such other damage as he may have suffered on account of
said refusal or failure, to be sued for and recovered in any court of the
United States, or of any State or Territory of competent jurisdiction.

Sec. 16. And be it further enacted, That any two or more of the com-
panies authorized to participate in the benefits of this Act, are hereby
authorized, at any time to unite and consolidate their organizations as the
same may, or shall be, upon such terms and conditions, and in such man-
ner as they may agree upon, and as shall not be incompatible with this
Act, or the laws of the State or States in ivhich the roads of such com-
panies may be, and to assume and adopt such corporate name and style
as they may agree upon, with a capital stock not to exceed the actual
cost of the roads so to be consolidated, and shall file a copy of such con-
solidation in the Department of the Interior, and thereupon such organi-
zation so formed and consolidated shall succeed to possess and be enti-
tled to receive from the Government of the United States, all and sin-
gular, the grants, benefits, immunities, guarantees, acts and things, to
be done and performed, and be subject to the same terms, conditions, re-
strictions and requirements which said companies respectively, at the
time of such consolidation are, or may be entitled or subject to under
this Act, in place and substitution of said companies so consolidated re-
spectively, and all other provisions of this Act, so far as applicable, re-
lating, or in any manner appertaining to the companies so consolidated,

252

or either thereof, shall apply and he of force as to such consolidated
organization. And in case, upon the completion by such consolidated
organization, of the roads, or either of them, of the companies so consol-
idated, any other of the road, or roads, of either of the other companies
authorized as aforesaid (and forming or intended, or necessary to form a
portion of a continuous line from each of the several points on the Mis-
souri River, hereinbefore designated, to the Pacific coast), shall not have
constructed the number of miles of its said road within the time herein
required, such consolidated organization is hereby authorized to con-
tinue the construction of its road and telegraph in the general direction
and route upon which such incomplete, or unconstructed road is herein-
before authorized to be built, until such continuation of the road of such
consolidated organization shall reach the constructed road and telegraph
of said other company, and at such point to connect and unite therewith ;
and for and in aid thereof the said consolidated organization may do and
perform in reference to such portion of road and telegraph as shall
so be in continuation of its constructed road and telegraph, and to the
construction and equipment thereof, all and singular the several Acts
and things hereinbefore provided, authorized or granted to be done by
the company hereinbefore authorized to construct and equip the same,
and shall be entitled to similar and like grants, benefits, immunities,
guarantees, acts and things to be done and performed by the Govern-
ment of the United States, by the President of the United States, by the
Secretaries of the Treasurj' and Interior, and by Commissioners, in re-
ference to such company, and to such portion of the road hereinbefore
authorized to be constructed by it; and upon the like and similar terms
and conditions, so far as the same are applicable thereto. And said con-
solidated company shall pay to said defaulting company the value, to be
estimated by competent engineers, of all the work done and material
furnished by said defaulting company, which may be adopted and used
by said consolidated company in the progress of the work under the pro-
visions of this section; provided, nevertheless, that said defaulting company
may at &x\y time before receiving pay for its said work and material, as
hereinbefore provided, on its own election, pay said consolidated com-
pany the value of the work done and material furnished by said consoli-
dated company, to be estimated bj7 competent engineers, necessary for,
and used -in the construction of the road of said defaulting cornpan}7, and
resume the control of its said road; and all the rights, benefits and priv-
ileges which shall be acquired, possessed or exercised, pursuant to this
section, shall be to that extent an abatement of the rights, benefits and
privileges hereinbefore granted to such other company. And in case
any company authorized thereto, shall not enter into such consolidated
organization, such company, upon the completion of its l'oad, as herein-
before provided, shall be entitled to, and is hereby authorized to con-
tinue and extend the same under the circumstances and in accordance
with the provisions of this section, and to have all the benefits thereof,
as fully and completely as are herein provided touching such consoli-
dated organization. And in case more than one such consolidated or-
ganization shall be made, pursuant to this Act, the terms and conditions
of this Act hereinbefore recited as to one, shall imply in like manner,
force and effect to the other; 'provided, however, that the rights and inter-
ests at any time acquired by one such consolidated organization, shall
not be impaired by another thereof. It is further provided, that should
the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California complete their line
to the eastern line of the State of California before the line of the Union

253

Pacific Euilroad Company shall have been extended westward so as to
meet the line of such first named company, said first named company
may extend their line of road eastward one hundred and fifty miles on
the established route, so as to meet and connect with the line of the
Union Pacific road, complying in all respects to the provisions and re-
strictions of this Act as to said Union Pacific road; and upon doing so
shall enjoy all the rights, privileges and benefits conferred by this Act
on said Union Pacific Eailroad Company.

Sec. 17. And be it further enacted, That so much of section fourteen of
said Act as relates to a branch from Sioux City be, and the same is,
hereby amended so as to read as follows: "That whenever a line of
railroad shall be completed through the States of Iowa or Minnesota to
Sioux City, such company now organized, or as may hereafter be organ-
ized, under the laws of Iowa, Minnesota, Dacotab, or Nebraska, as the
President of the United States, by its request, may designate or approve
for that purpose, shall construct and operate a line of railroad and tele-
graph from Sioux City, upon the most direct and practicable route to
such a point on and so as to connect with the Iowa branch of the Union
Pacific Eailroad from Omaha or the Union Pacific Pailroad, as such com-
pany may select, and on the same terms and conditions as are provided
in this Act, and the Act of which this is an amendment, for the con-
struction of the said Union and Pacific Pailroad and telegraph line and
branches; and said company shall complete the same at the rate of fifty
miles per year ; provided, that said Union Pacific Eailroad Company shall
be, and is hereby, released from the construction of said branch. And
said companj- constructing said branch shall not be entitled to receive in
bonds an amount larger than the said Union Pacific Eailroad Company
would be entitled to receive if it had constructed the branch under this
Act, and the Act to which this is an amendment; but said company
shall be entitled to receive alternate sections of land for ten miles in
width on each side of the same, along the whole length of said branch.
And provided, farther, That if a railroad should not be completed to Sioux
City, across Iowa or Minnesota, within eighteen months from the date
of this Act, then said company designated by the President as aforesaid
may commence, continue and complete the construction of said branch,
as contemplated by the provisions of this Act; provided, however, that if
the said company so designated by the President as aforesaid, shall not
complete the said branch from Sioux City to the Pacific Eailroad within
ten years from the passage of this Act, then and in that case all of the
railroads which shall have been constructed by said company shall be
forfeited to and become the property of the United States.

Sec. 18. And be it further enacted., That the Burlington and Missouri
Eiver Eailroad Company, a corporation organized under and by virtue
of the laws of the State of Iowa, be, and hereby is, authorized to ex-
tend its road through the Territory of Nebraska, from the point
where it strikes the Missouri Eiver south of the mouth of the Platte
Eiver to some point not further west than the one hundredth meridian
of west longitude, so as to connect by the most practicable route with
the main trunk of the (Jnion Pacific Eailroad, or that part of it which
runs from Omaha to the said one hundredth meridian of west longitude.
And for the purpose of enabling the said Burlington and Missouri Eiver
Eailroad Company to construct that portion of theirroad herein authorized,
the right of way through the public lands is hereby granted to said com-
pany for the construction of said road. And the right, power and au.
thority is hereby given to the said company to take from the public landB

254

adjacent to the line of said road, earth, stone, timber, and other mate-
rials, for the construction thereof. Said right of way is granted to said
company to the extent of two hundred feet, where it may pass over the
public lands, including all necessary grounds for stations, buildings,
work shops, depots, machine shops, switches, side track, turn tables, and
water stations. The United States shall extinguish as rapidly as may
be consistent with public policjr and the welfare of the said Indians, the
Indian titles to all lands falling under the operation of this section, and
required for the said right of way and grant of land herein named.

Sec. 19. And be it further enacted, That for the purpose of aiding in
the construction of said road, there be and hereby is granted to the said
Burlington and Missouri Eiver Railroad Company every alternate sec-
tion of public land (except mineral lands as provided in this Act) desig-
nated by odd numbers, to the amount of ten alternate sections per mile
on each side of said road on the line thereof, and not sold, reserved, or
otherwise disposed of b}r the United States, and to which a pre-emption
or homestead claim may not have attached at the time a line of said
road is definitely fixed; provided, [that] said company shall accept this
grant within one year from the passage of this Act by filing such ac-
ceptance with the Secretary of the Interior, and shall also establish the
line of said road, and file a map thereof with the Secretary of the Inte-
rior within one year of the date of said acceptance, when the said Sec-
retary shall withdraw the lands embraced in this grant from market.

Sec. 20. And be it further enacted, That whenever said Burlington
and Missouri River Railroad Company shall have completed twenty con-
secutive miles of the road mentioned in the foregoing section, in the
manner provided for other roads mentioned in this Act and the Act of
which this is an amendment, the President of the United States shall
appoint three Commissioners to examine and report to him in relation
thereto, and if it shall appear to him that twenty miles of said road have
been completed as required by this Act, then upon certificate of said
Commissioners] to that effect, patents shall issue conveying the right
and title to said lands to said company on each side of said road, as far
as the same is completed, to the amount aforesaid; and such examina-
tion, report and conveyance by patents shall continue from time to time
in like manner until said road shall have been completed. And the Presi-
dent shall appoint said Commissioners to fill vacancies in said Commis-
sion, as provided in relation to other roads mentioned in the Act to
which this is an amendment. And the said company shall be entitled
to all the privileges and immunities granted to the Hannibal and St.
Joseph Railroad Company to aid in the construction of said extension of
its road; and provided, further, that said extension shall be completed
within the period of ten years from the passage of this Act.

Sec. 21. And be it further [enacted'], That before any land granted by
this Act shall be conveyed to any company or party entitled thereto
under this Act, there shall first be paid into the treasury of the United
States, the cost of survej'ing, selecting and conveying the same by the
said company or party in interest, as the titles shall be required by said
company, which amount shall, without any further appropriation, stand
to the credit of the proper account, to be used by the Commissioners of
the general land office for the prosecution of the survey of the public
lands along the line of said roads, and so from ye&Y to year, until the
whole shall be completed, as provided under the provisions of this Act.

Sec. 22. And be it further enacted, That Congress may, at any time,
alter, amend, or repeal this Act.

Approved July two, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four.

255

AN ACT amendatory of and supplementary to an Act to amend an Act
entitled "An Act to aid in the construction of a Railroad and Telegraph
Line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to the
Government the use of the same for postal, military and other purposes ,"
approved July first, one thousand eight hundred and sixty -two, approved
July two, one thousand eight hundred and sixty -four.

Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That section ten of
said Act of July two, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, be so
modified and amended as to allow the Central Pacific Railroad Company
and the Western Pacific Railroad Company, of California, to issue their
six per centum thirty years bonds, interest payable in any lawful money
of the United States, upon their separate roads. And the said compa-
nies are hereby authorized to issue, respectively, their bonds to the ex-
tent of one hundred miles, in advance of a continuous completed line
from Sacramento.

Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That the assignment made by the
Central Pacific Railroad Compan}' of California, to the Western Pacific
Railroad Compan}7 of said State, of the right to construct all that por-
tion of said railroad and telegraph from the city of San Jose to the city
of Sacramento, is hereby ratified and confirmed to the said Western Pa-
cific Railroad Company, with ail the privileges and benefits of the sev-
eral Acts of Congress relating thereto, and subject to all the conditions
thereof; provided, that the time within which the Western Pacific Rail-
road Company shall be required to construct the first twenty miles of
their said road shall be one year from the first day of July, one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-five, and that the entire road shall be completed
from San Jose" to Sacramento, connecting at the latter point with the
said Central Pacific Railroad within four years thereafter.

From letters recently received, it is known that Senator Stewart for-
warded to the Committee a condensed statement in regard to congress-
ional proceedings on the Pacific Railroad bills. By some mishap the
the statement has not come to hand, though publication has been delayed
to the latest time, in hope that it would reach us.

Under date of March eleventh, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
five, Cornelius Cole, late Member of Congress from California, writes to
the Chairman of the Railroad Committee :

"This end of the Pacific Railroad is in Wall Street, and seems never
likely to get out. A set of swindlers and stock jobbers have it, and
they don't intend to build the road, nor any more of it than they can
help. I am rather proud of the California end, for they have finished a
few miles."

An intelligent and thoroughly informed correspondent of a California
daily journal writes, under "date of first of March : The impression is
gaining ground here, that the parties who undertook the construction of
the eastern sections of the Pacific Railroad, are not acting in good faith
with the Government, or likely to speedily accomplish what they have

256

agreed to in the way of advancing the work. Accordingly, Mr. Cox has
introduced, and had referred to the Pacific Eailroad Committee of the
House, a series of Joint Eesolutions :

First. — Authorizing the President to employ any portion of United
States troops, not otherwise engaged, to prepare the bed and construct
the Pacific Eailroad.

Second — Authorizing the value of the work which maybe done by the
troops to be deducted from the bonds, or other aid extended by law to
the companies who have undertaken the construction of the road under
the Act of Congress.

Third. — Authorizing an increase of the compensation of officers and
men while thus employed, not to exceed the amount of bonds, or other
aid withheld from the companies.

EEPOET OF BOARD

CONVENED TO DETERMINE ON A STANDARD FOR

'^CONSTRUCTION of the pacific railroad.

HONORABLE JAMES HARLAN, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR

FEBRUARY 24, 1866:

ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTS

WASHINGTON:

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

18G6, CALIFORNIA STATE LtBFM

CONTENTS.

Letter from Colonel Simpson, chairman of board, transmitting report of its proceed-
ings to honorable Secretary of the Interior 5

Letter from Secretary of Interior approving report, and directing it to be used for

guidance of commissioners and directors 6

Journal of proceedings of board 6

Appendix A. — Orders for government commissioners and directors to meet in Wash-
ington as members of board 14

Appendix B. — Invitations to presidents of roads interested to be present at meeting

of board 15

Appendix C. — Letter of Secretary of Interior in regard to organization of board 15

Appendix D. — Circular No. 2, asking opinions on some details of construction 15

Appendix E. — Eeply from Major General M. C. Meigs, Quartermaster General, to

circular No. 2 16

Appendix F. — Eeply from Herman Haupt, civil engineer, to circular No. 2 18

Appendix G. — Eeply from John B. Jervis, civil engineer, to circular No. 2 20

Appendix H. — Letter from T. Swinyard, transmitting- remarks of George Lowe Eeid,

civil engineer, on circular No. 2 ' 23

Appendix I. — Eeply from Ashbel Welch, civil engineer, to circular No. 2 24

Appendix J. — Eeply from Benjamin H. Latrobe, civil engineer, to circular No. 2 . . 25

Appendix K. — Eeply from G. A. Nicolls to circular No. 2 29

Appendix L. — Eeply from W. W. Evans, civil engineer, to circular No. 2 30

Appendix M. — Eeply from Silas Seymour, civil engineer, to circular No. 2 40

Appendix N. — Letter from Philip S. Justice to Hon. Springer Harbaugh in relation

to steel rails 43

Appendix O. — Letter from William P. Shinn to Hon. M. Welker in relation to fish-
joints ; with letter from Hon. M. Welker to Colonel T. C. Sherman transmitting the

same 45

Appendix P. — Letter from T. C. Durant to Colonel Simpson 46

Appendix Q. — Telegram from H. H. Gardner to J. L. Williams in relation to fish-
joints 46

Appendix E. — Communication of Hon. Jesse L. Williams in relation to standard for

construction of Pacific railroad 4?

Appendix S. — Weight and dimensions of rails recommended by different engineers,

&c 5<?

REPORT

BOARD ON CONSTRUCTION OF PACIFIC RAILROAD,

Department of the Interior, Engineer Office,

Washington, D. C, February 24, 1S66.

Sir : I have the honor to submit, herewith, a report of the proceedings of a
board of government commissioners, directors, and engineer, convened by your
direction, to determine on a standard for the Pacific railroad and branches, with
the accompanying documents.

The replies from eminent engineers and others to a circular sent, asking their
views on certain points of railroad construction, and which are included witb
these papers, will be found to contain much valuable and interesting inform-
ation.

Their views and suggestions have been of much service in establishing the
standard recommended by the board, since, although not practicable to give this
road the solidity and perfection recommended by these replies, from the outset,
without preventing its rapid progress and completion at an early date, as required
by law, yet, as the character of road they all recommend is clearly that which
will be needed when it is fully opened and doing a heavy business, the board
have endeavored to make such a standard as will secure a good track without
retarding the progress, and advise that every step of the work be made with a
view to ultimate perfection.

Thus, while the board deem it essential that the work shall be thoroughly
ballasted, and all the bridges provided with masonry piers and abutments, yet,
knowing that the high embankments will require some time to settle before the
track is finally adjusted, and that, in many cases, both ballast and stone for
masonry must be brought by rail, they have thought best not to make the
acceptance of any section contingent on the completion of its masonry and bal-
lasting, but prefer that such parts of the road be accepted in case this work
shall have been commenced and is progressing vigorously on the preceding
sections.

It has been the aim of the board to give due and impartial consideration to
the questions of economy, of first cost, and of ultimate working, as well as to the
rapid progress and final adaptation to the traffic to be expected from this great
work.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. H. SIMPSON,
Lieutenant Co'.onel Engineers, Chairman of Board.

Hon. James Harlan,

Secretary of the Interior.

Department of the Interior,
Washington, D. C, February 24, 1866.

Colonel : The report of the proceedings of the board to determine on a stand-
ard for the construction of the Pacific railroad, with the accompanying documents,
lias been received.

The results arrived at by the board, as embodied in the report it has adopted
in regard to the construction of the road, are approved, and it is hereby directed
that said report be used by the directors and commissioners as a guide for their
action in directing or accepting the work. To this end you will cause copies to
be furnished these officers as soon as printed.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES HAKLAN,

Secretary of the Interior.
Colonel J. H. Simpson,

Corps Engineers U. S. A., Ch'n of Board, Chief Eng. Dep. Interior.

Journal of proceedings of board convened to determine on a standard for con-
struction of the Pacific railroad.

"Washington, D. C, February 1, 1866.

The first meeting of a board to determine on a standard for the construction
of the Pacific and other railroads in which the government has an interest, con-
vened by order of the Hon. James Harlan, Secretary of the Interior, was held
at 12 o'clock m., in the Washington Aqueduct office.

The board was organized in compliance with the following instructions, &c,
from the honorable Secretary of the Interior :

1. Orders for the government commissioners and directors to report in Wash"
ington, as members of the board. — Appendix A.

2. Invitations to presidents of several companies interested to be present in
person or by proxy. — Appendix B.

3. Order appointing as chairman of the board Lieutenant Colonel J. H.
Simpson, corps of engineers, and as secretary Mr. John It. Gilliss, assistant
engineer. — Appendix C.

In compliance with his instructions, Colonel Simpson took the chair and
called the board to order.

The board of government commissioners, directors, and engineer were present,
as follows:

Government Commissioners. — Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Simpson, corps of
engineers U. S. army, chief engineer Department of the Interior, and commis-
sioner for L nion Pacific railroad and Union Pacific railway, eastern division ;
Major General S. Pi. Curtis, of Iowa, commissioner for Union Pacific railroad and
Union Pacific railway, eastern division; Hon. Wm M. White, of Connecticut,
commissioner for Union Pacific railroad ; Hon. P. H. Sibley, of California, com-
missioner for Central Pacific railroad; Hon. Wm. P. Smith, of Maryland, com-
missioner of Union Pacific railway, eastern division.

Government directors on Union Pacifc railroad. — Hon. George Ashmun, of
Massachusetts ; Hon. Jesse L. Williams, of Indiana; Hon. Springer Harbaugh,

of Pennsylvania ; Hon .'Timothy J. Carter, of Illinois; Hon. Charles T. Sher-
man, of Ohio.

The following gentlemen were also present as representatives of the several
companies engaged in constructing the Pacific road and branches :

C. P. Huntington, esq., vice-president Central Pacific railroad ; Hon. S. C.
Pomeroy, president Atchison Branch Pacific railroad ; Hon. Wm. B. Allison,
vice-president Sioux City and Pacific railroad ; Hon. Oakes Ames, Sioux City
and Pacific railroad ; R. M. Shoemaker, chief engineer Union Pacific railway,
eastern division ; Geo. W. McCook, esq., attorney Union Pacific railway, east-
ern division; Hugh L. Jewett, esq., director Union Pacific railway, eastern
division.

The chairman then stated that to obtain information on some points having
an important bearing on the subject before the board, he had, by direction of
the Hon. James Harlan, Secretary of the Interior, addressed a circular (No. 2)
to eminent railroad engineers and others, asking their opinions on certain im-
portant details of railroad construction.

Circular No. 2 and the replies to it were then read. (See appendices D to
M, inclusive.)

On motion of General Curtis, these papers were referred to a committee of five,
to be appointed by the chairman.

The following named gentlemen were appointed on this committee : S. R.
Curtis, Jesse L. Williams, P. H. Sibley, Springer Harbaugh, and Timothy J.
Carter.

On motion of Mr. George Ashmun, it was resolved that the Pacific railroad
committees of each house of Congress be invited to attend the meetings of the
board.

Invitations to this effect were accordingly sent by the chairman.

On motion of Mr. Charles T. Sherman, it was resolved that when the board
adjourn, it be to meet at 10 a.m., February 2, that early hour being selected to
accommodate the congressional committees.

On motion of Mr. Charles T. Sherman, it was resolved that a committee of
three be appointed by the chairman to report whether any additional con-
gressional legislation be desirable in connexion with the action of the board.

The following named gentlemen were appointed on this committee : Charles
T. Sherman, George Ashmun, Wm. M. White.

A debate then ensued as to the organization of the board, especially as to
whether those present who were not government officers, but only represented
the companies, were authorized to vote. The question was decided in the
negative by the chairman, who referred to the instructions under which the
board was organized.

A debate as to the character of road that should be built then ensued, par-
ticipated in by Messrs. Shoemaker, Ames, Williams, the chairman and others.

At half past two o'clock p. m. the board adjourned, to meet again at 10
o'clock a. m., February 2.

Washington, February 2, 1866.

In pursuance of adjournment, the second meeting of the board was held at 10
o'clock a. m.

In addition to members at. the previous meeting, the Hon. Hiram Price, of
Iowa, chairman of House committee on Pacific railroad ; Hon. J. P. Usber,
attorney for Union Pacific railway, eastern division, and others, were present.

After the board had been called to order the minutes of the last meeting were
read.

Mr. Huntington called attention to the fact that the Central Pacific railroad
was not represented in the committee on legislation.

On motion of Mr. Sherman, it was resolved that the committee on legislation
be increased to four members by the addition of Mr. Sibley, commissioner on
Central Pacific railroad.

A debate then ensued, participated in by General Curtis, Mr. Williams, and
others, as to the duties of the committee to whom replies to circular No. 2 and
other papers had been referred.

On motion of Mr. Williams, it was resolved that said committee be the busi-
ness committee of the board, and that the chairman be ex officio a member of it.

A debate then followed on the subject of establishing a standard — the prac-
tical objections to it on the one hand, and the importance of securing a good
road, and of uniformity of action on the part of all concerned, on the other. It
was participated in by nearly every member of the board.

On motion of Mr. Ashmun, at 1 p. m., it was resolved that the board adjourn,
to give the committees an opportunity to prepare their reports.

Washington, February 3, 1866.

The third meeting of the board was held at 11 a. m. After it had been
called to order the minutes of the last meeting were read.

General Curtis, as chairman of the business committee, then read its report
on a standard to be recommended for the construction of the Pacific railroad.

Mr. Shoemaker suggested that the report be so amended that bridges could
be accepted if the masonry had been commenced.

After some discussion the following proviso was agreed upon and inserted in
the report :

" Provided, That temporary trestles may be adopted upon assurances, to the
satisfaction of the commissioners, that stone abutments will be substituted im-
mediately after the lines shall be opened, so that stone can be transported
thereon."

A debate followed as to the credentials of some of the representatives of com-
panies present, participated in by the chairman, General Curtis, and others.

On motion of General Curtis, it was resolved that technicalities be waived,
and that representatives of the companies present be allowed to give their opin-
ions.

A clause in the report of the business committee recommended that the com-
missioners inspect the location of the work before construction was commenced.
Messrs. Curtis, Pomeroy, Sibley, Shoemaker, and others, gave their views at
some length on this clause. It was finally resolved that it be left out;

On motion of Mr. Ashmun, it was resolved that the report of the business
committee be read and debated by sections.

The preamble and succeeding sections on grades and curves were then read
and adopted.

The section on embankments and excavations was then read. It was ob-
jected to by Mr. Shoemaker, and a debate followed as to the proper width for
cuts at the grade line, participated in by Messrs. Curtis, Williams, Sibley, and
the chairman. «

A motion was made that the section on embankments and excavations be
amended ; which was not agreed to : Yeas, 4 — Messrs. Curtis, White, Sibley, and
Smith. Nays, 6 — Messrs. Simpson, Ashmun, Williams, Harbaugh, Carter, and
Sherman.

The next two sections, relating to mechanical structures and ballasting, were
then read and adopted without dissent.

The section relating to cross-ties was then read. One paragraph in the report
recommended that "sawed ties should not be less than 6 inches thick, 8 inches
wide, and 8 feet long, nor less than 2,400 to the mile."

This was objected to by Mr. Shoemaker, and the subject was discussed by
Messrs. Williams, Shoemaker, Sibley, Carter, and others.

During this debate Mr. Smith stated that it was necessary for him to leave;
that he was satisfied with the report; that it was a reasonable common-sense
document, and that he wished his name recorded on the vote in its favor. He
then proposed the following as a conclusion to the report, which was agreed to
and added to it :

"It is the aim of this board to secure all these objects, and it is also our belief
that they are not incompatible, it being only necessary, on the part of the govern-
ment, to insist UDon the reasonable requirements embodied in this report, to hasten
the completion of the great work, and at the same time adapt it to the high
public interest which it is intended to subserve."

On motion of Mr. Williams, it was resolved that the paragi-aph be amended so
as to require 2,500 ties per mile, of not less than 7-inch face, if sawed : Yeas, 6 —
Messrs. Simpson, Ashmun, Williams, Harbaugh, Carter, and Sherman. Nays, 3 —
Messrs. Curtis, White, and Sibley.

The section relating to rails was then read. One paragraph recommended
that if found impracticable to use the fish-joint immediately, holes should be
punched in the ends of the rails so that fish-plates might be used afterwards.

This was objected to by some of the members ; and on motion of Mr. Harbaugh,
it was resolved that the clause recommending holes to be punched in rails for
fish-plates be left out. The section relating to rails was then adopted.

The section relating to side tracks was, after some debate, amended to read
"eight feet apart in the clear between the rails," instead of " ten feet," as at first
written.

On motion of Mr. Sibley, the section relating to rails was reconsidered, but
after being debated by Messrs. Sibley, Williams, Curtis, and Huntington, was
not altered. The next two sections, on sidings, as previously amended, and on
rolling stock, were passed Avdthout debate.

The section relating to buildings was then read, and, at Mr. Shoemaker's re-
quest, after "engine-houses and repair shops " the words "at the principal sta-
tions" were inserted. As thus amended the section passed.

The concluding section was then read.

At the suggestion of Mr. Shoemaker, an amendment was proposed by the in-
sertion of a general proviso, as follows :

" The limitations contained in this report are not intended to interfere with
the work already commenced, or materials delivered or in transitu, but all such
cases are left subject to the inspection of the commissioners, whose duty it shall
be to inspect the work."

Messrs. Williams, Harbaugh, and the chairman objected to the amendment,
and it was lost.

The concluding section, with the additional paragraph proposed by Mr. Smith,
was, after some further debate, adopted.

On motion of General Curtis, it was resolved that where the word "shall"
occurs in the report, it be made to read " should" or "may," and that for the word
"convention" be substituted the word "board."

On motion of Mr. Ashmun, the report was recommitted to the business com-
mittee to engross and present at the next meeting.

On motion of General Curtis, at 4 p. m., the board adjourned to meet again at
10 p. m., February 5th.

Washington, February 5, 1S66.

The fourth and last meeting of the board was held at 11 a. m. After it had
been called to order the minutes of the previous meeting were read.

General Curtis, as chairman of the business committee, read its report as
amended at the previous meeting.

Mr. Williams suggested that the paragraph relating to sawed ties be amended

to read, "If sawed, they should not be less than eight inches wide, and not less ;
than 2,400 per mile, or such number as will have the same bearing surface, pro-
vided that if" any sawed ties have been already delivered or contracted for, only
seven inches wide, they may be laid clown."

On motion of Mr. White, the amendment was adopted unanimously.

At the suggestion of Mr. Harbaugh, and on motion of Mr. Williams, the follow-
ing addition was made to the report :

"Wherever cattle-guards and road-crossings are necessary they should be
made."

On motion of Mr. Sherman, the report of busiuess committee, as finally
amended, was then adopted unanimously by the board.

EEPOET OF BUSINESS COMMITTEE.

Your committee, to whom were referred various communications of ex-
perienced and scientific engineers concerning a suitable standard for the work
on the Pacific railroad and its several branches, and to whom was also assigned
the duty of presenting to the board proper subjects for its consideration, as
contemplated by the call of the honorable the Secretary of the Interior, have
the honor to present the following report:

The various locations through which the Pacific railroad and its branches are
destined to run occupy such a variety of country as to render a specific style of
work suited to all localities extremely difficult. The topographical features of
the surface, the great variety of soils and lower strata of the earth, the singu-
lar variety of climate as to cold and heat, wet and dry, all have to be con-
sidered in determining details of location, material, and form of the work. It
was, probably, because of these difficulties the laws of Congress authorizing the
construction give only general or very meagre specifications as to the details of
the Pacific railroad.

But your committee, after availing themselves of the views expressed by the
several engineers to which they have referred, and in contemplation of the
reasonable construction of the law of Congress, recommend to the board the
adoption of the following general rules as those which should govern all parties
engaged in directing, constructing, or accepting the work:

Every step taken in the work, and especially in the location of lines and
grades, should be adapted to ultimate perfection, whatever may be immediate
interests or necessities, so as to secure to the nation a grand and complete
structure, every way worthy of our country and honorable to the distinguished
men who involve their capital and energies in so vast an enterprise.

LOCATION.

Great care should be observed in the determination of the general and de-
tailed location of the main line and branches, so as to secure the shortest lines
consistent with economical grades to the most desirable passes of the mountaiu
ranges. The law names but few points ; still it is clearly the interest of the
government and not prejudicial to the companies to determine such points as a
great general line should have, so as to unite, as far as possible, all the great
ultimate purposes of a central and convenient channel for the commerce of
nations that is likely to traverse the road.

With this general view of the work, careful and extended surveys should be
made and well considered.

GRADES AND CURVES.

While the law makes the grades and curves adopted on the Baltimore and
Ohio railroad a standard, this is only to be considered as a limit to be adopted

in mountain districts. To introduce grades of 116 feet per mile, or curves as
sharp as 400 feet radius, on other parts of the road, would manifestly violate
the spirit and intent of the law. Grades and curves should he settled upon
principles of true economy and adaptation, hased upon careful scientific and
practical investigations, having due regard both to cost of construction and
future working of the road.

It is safe to say, in advance, that on the Platte and Kansas valleys, and on
similar smooth valleys or level plains, no grade should exceed thirty feet eleva-
tion per mile.

EMBANKMENTS AND EXCAVATIONS.

In all parts of the main line of road or branches, embankments should not
be less than fourteen feet wide at the grade line. Excavations, if the cuts are
lengthy, should be twenty-six feet wide, and in shorter cuts at least twenty-
four feet ; thus leaving in all cases room for continuous side ditches of ample
depth and width, so as to secure that most essential requisite, a well-drained
road-bed. Rock excavations should be not less than sixteen feet wide, and all
tunnels should be excavated for a double track. Slopes of earth embankments
should be one and a half base to one rise. Excavations, except in rock, should
have slopes from one to one and a halt base to one rise, depending upon the
material ; or if steeper, then to have increased width at grade, so as to remove
the same quantity of earth contained within the slopes.

MECHANICAL STRUCTURES.

Culverts and abutments for bridges and drains should be of stone, whenever
a durable article can be obtained within a reasonable distance — say from five to
eight miles, depending upon circumstances ; provided that temporary trestles
may be adopted upon assurances, to the satisfaction of the commissioners, that
stone abutments will be substituted immediately after the line shall be opened,
so that stone can be transported thereon. But if good stone be too remote, then
hard-burned brick or wooden trestle work may be adopted. The wood to be of
the most durable character the country will afford ; and the wood or brick to be
replaced by stone when that material can be conveyed conveniently by rail.
Bridges of stone, or iron or wood, (such as the Howe truss, or other equally good
structure,) should be used at the discretion of the company.

BALLASTING.

A railroad cannot be considered complete until it is well ballasted. If com-
posed of gravel or broken stone it should be from 12 to 24 inches thick, depend-
ing on the lower material. In view of the settling of new embankments, which
require time and rains before ballasting can be properly placed, and also in
view of the number of miles required by the law to be constructed annually, the
perfect finish of the road-bed in this respect must be progressive and the work
of time. Yet it is the opinion of the board that such work of perfecting the
ballast must proceed as usual on first-class railroads ; otherwise subsequent sec-
tions should not be accepted, because the whole work is not then being carried
forward as a great Pacific railroad, such as the law contemplates.

CROSS-TIES.

Oak or other suitable timber should be used, where it can be obtained with
reasonable transportation. When such timber cannot be had for all the ties at
reasonable cost, then the best the country affords may be adopted; but if it be
cottonwood, or similar soft material, it must be Burnettizcd or kyanized thoroughly

so as to increase its durability. But in all cases the joint tie should be of oak,
or other suitable timber, the better to hold the spikes at these points. There
should be at least 2,400 ties to the mile. They should be eight feet long, six
inches thick, and, if hewn, six inches on the face. If sawed, they should not be
less than eight inches wide and not less than 2,400 per mile, or such number as
wdl have the same bearing surface, provided that if any sawed ties have been
already delivered or contracted for only seven inches wide, they may be laid
down.

RAILS.

These are to be of American iron, as required by law, of the best quality, and
should weigh sixty pounds to the yard. But in consideration of the great cost
of transportation from the present location of rolling mills to the remote sections
of this road, iron may be adopted which weighs only fifty-six pounds to the yard.
In mountain districts, however, where heavier engines will be used, not less
than sixty-pound rails should be adopted; provided that if any of the companies
have on hand or in transitu, or contracted for, any rails of different weight from
that herein specified, and not under fifty pounds per yard, such rails may be
used. The rails should be attached to each tie by spikes driven on both sides
of the rail. As the nearest approximation to a continuous rail, the so-called
fish-joint is preferred and recommended; but if found that it will retard the
progress of the work, the common American wrought-iron chair may be used.

SIDINGS.

The length of side tracks should be at least six per cent, of the line completed,
to be increased as the number of passing trains shall demand. Side tracks should
also be laid eight feet apart in the clear between the rails. Wherever cattle-
guards and road-crossings are necessary they should be made.

ROLLING STOCK.

Locomotive engines and cars must be provided in liberal proportion to the
traffic and the convenient, construction, to be increased from time to time as the
completion of additional sections and the increase of business seem to require.

BUILDINGS.

Engine-houses, repair shops, and station buildings should be adapted to the
wants of the service.

At the opening of business, the extent and capacity of buildings may be only
such as to provide liberally for the existing rolling stock and the business of the
road, and such probable early increase as may seem likely ; yet the plans in all
cases, both as to the buildings and grounds, should be arranged for prospective
enlargements and extensions equal to any future business of the road, the
buildings at first erected forming appropriate parts of a complete and systematic
whole.

Engine-houses and repair shops at the principal stations must in all cases be
of stone or brick, with good stone foundations. The covering should be slate
or metallic, to guard as far as possible against fire.

Water stations should be erected at convenient distances to suit the wants of
the trains.

Extensive and convenient locations of ground should be procured to accom-
modate a future large business, and the proper titles should be carefully secured.
All this is the more desirable, as lands are now easily obtained at moderate
prices.

In these specifications it is believed that nothing is required which may not
be regarded as essential to a commodious and complete railroad. Nothing is
proposed to retard the progress of the companies. The importance and public
desire for accelerated movement have been fully appreciated, and the board
earnestly desires to favor and foster the energy and fidelity which now seems
to animate those engaged in the construction. But while guarding against
delay on one hand, the public interests require, on the other, a substantial and
complete work, and the highest perfection of track reasonably attainable on a
new road is expected and projected as the standard to which the workmen are
to arrive. The argument in favor of speedy construction must be subordinate
to the substantial objects of the road, and the government must be certain to
have a work that will convey her mails, troops, and munitions of war, and com-
merce of the country with entire certainty, celerity, and convenience. It is the
aim of this board to secure all these objects, and it. is also our belief that they
are not incompatible, it being only necessary on the part of the government to
insist upon the reasonable requirements embodied in this report to hasten the
completion of the great work, and at the same time adapt it to the high public
interest which it is intended to subserve.

Mr. Sherman, as its chairman, then read the following report of committee
on legislation :

" The committee to whom was referred the subject of legislation on the matters
under consideration by this board respectfully report : That the results arrived
at cannot properly be enacted in the form of a statute, and we therefore do not
deem it advisable for us to ask any legislation from Congress at the present
time.

" We, however, deem it proper to suggest that it is possible legislation may
be proposed hereafter, and, in that case, this committee should be charged with
the duty of giving its attention to the proposed action."

On motion of Mr. Ashmun, this report was adopted.

The following papers were submitted by different members of the board, and
their motions to have them filed with its records were adopted :

Letter from Philip S. Justice to Hon. Springer Harbaugh in relation to steel
rails — Appendix N.

Letter from Wm, P. Shinn to Hon. M. Welker in relation to fish joints, and
letter from Hon. M. Welker to Hon. Chas. T. Sherman transmitting the same. —
Appendix 0.

Letter from T. C. Durant, esq., vice-president Union Pacific railroad, to
Colonel Simpson — Appendix P.

Telegram from H. H. Gardner to J. L. Williams in relation to fish joints —
Appendix Q.

On motion of Mr. Ashmun, it was resolved that the remarks made during
debates be omitted from the minutes of the board.

Messrs. Shoemaker and McCook then expressed their appreciation of the
courtesy shown to representatives of the various companies by the chairman
and board.

On motion of Mr. Ashmun, the following resolution was passed unanimously:

'' Resolved, That we desire to express the thanks of this board to the
officers and representatives of the different companies engaged in building the
Pacific railroad, who have attended our meetings, and have given valuable
information to enable this board to arrive at its results; and also to express
our great satisfaction at the earnest and vigorous efforts which the several
companies engaged in the prosecution of the great work they have in hand
are making to press it forward to as speedy and creditable completion as the
means within their power will justify."

The board then called, in a body, on the Hon. Secretary of the Interior to
pay their respects. After stating to him, through their chairman, that their
labors had been ended in a manner mutually satisfactory, and his expressing
gratification at the result, the convention adjourned sine die.

J. H. SIMPSON,
Lieut. Col. Corps Engineers, Gov't Com'r and Chairman.
S R. CURTIS,
Com'r U. P. R.R, and U. P. R., E. D.
WM. M. WHITE,

Commissioner U. P. R. R.
P. H. SIBLEY,

Com'r Central P. R. R.
WM. P. SMITH,

Com'r U. P. R., E. D. .
GEO. ASHMUN,

Gov't Director U. P.R. R.
JESSE L. WILLIAMS,

Gov't Director U. P. R. R.
SPRINGER HARBAUGH,

Gov't Director U. P. R. R.
T. J. CARTER,

Gov't Direc'or U. P. R. R.
CHAS. T. SHERMAN,

Gov't Director U. P. R. R.
John R. Gilltss, Secretary.

APPENDIX A.

Department of the Interior, Engineer Office,

Washington, D. C, September 8, 1865.

Sir : A board, to consist of the government commissioners, directors and
engineer of the Pacific railroad, will convene in this city, at 12 meridian on the
10th day of January next, at this office, for the purpose of adopting some uni-
form standard of road to which the several companies organized under the acts
of July 1, 1862, and July 2, 1864, shall conform.

You are hereby respectfully requested to attend at the time and place desig-
nated, and the Secretary would be pleased to be informed, both by telegraph and
letter, if you will be able to comply.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. H. SIMPSON,
Lieutenant Colonel Engineers, in charge
Hon. P. H. Sibley,

Government Com'r Central Pacific R. R. Co.,

San Francisco, California.

Same as the above sent to Hon. Josiah Johnson, Sacramento, California, and
Hon. F. F. Low, San Francisco, California, commissioners Central Pacific rail-
road. Subsequent to this letter similar requests were sent to the government
commissioners and directors of the Union Pacific railroad, and to the govern-
ment commissioners on the Union Pacific railway, eastern division ; and the
day for the meeting was postponed to February 1.

APPENDIX B.

Department of the Interior, Engineer Office,

Washington, D. C, January 24, 1866.

Sir : The honorable Secretary of the Interior has instructed me to inform you
that a convention of the government directors, commissioners, and engineer
will be held in this city on the first proximo, to fix a standard for the Pacific
railroad and branches, and that you are invited, by proxy or otherwise, to
attend.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. H. SIMPSON,
Lieutenant Colonel Engineers.

Hon. S. C. POMEROY,

President Atchison Branch Union Pacific Railroad,

United States Senate.

A similar letter to the above was sent to the following person? : Jno. D.
Perry, esq., president Union Pacific railway, eastern division, St Louis, Missouri ;
and John J. Blair, esq., president Sioux City and Pacific Railroad Company,
New York city.

APPENDIX C.

Department of the Interior,

Washington, D. C, February 1, 1S66.

A board, consisting of the government directors, commissioners and engineer*
will meet to-day at 12 m. in the Washington Aqueduct building, for the purpose
of consulting together and fixing a standard to which the Union Pacific Rail-
road Company and branches and the Central Pacific Railroad Company shall
conform. Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Simpson, corps engineers, government
engineer, will preside over the board, and Mr. John R. Gilliss, assistant engi-
neer, will record the proceedings, which will be reported to this department.

JAS. HARLAN, Secretary.

APPENDIX D

In order that the deliberations of the board might be aided by the experience
of the best engineering talent of the country, cop:es of the following circular
were sent to forty-five of the leading engineers, railway superintendents, &c.

It is much to be regretted that the majority of the engineers to whom the
circular was sent either did not receive or did not find time to reply to it ;
since the answers from those who did reply contain an amount of information
on railroad construction seldom met in such a condensed form.

Certain questions were asked in the circular to indicate points on which
information was especially desired; but it was not intended to confine the
replies to these questions, and it will be seen that most of the engineers used
the questions simply as guides for the general arrangement of their answers,
and complied with the request that they would give their views on other points
having an important bearing on the subject.

( CIECULAE No. 2.)

Department of the Interior, Engineer Office,

Washington, D. C, December, 1865.

It being desirable to establish a standard to which the Pacific and other
railroads in which the government has an interest shall be made to conform, I
am instructed by the Hon. James Harlan, Secretary of the Interior, to solicit
your opinions on any of the following points which your experience and obser-
vations will enable you to give :

1st. Weight of rail for a first-class road, relative durability of rails of differ-
ent weights with same traffic, best cross section for same, and merits of different
varieties of American iron.

2d. Best plan for chairs, spikes, or other joint fastenings.

3d. Dimensions of and distances between ties.

4th. Width of road-bed at grade, in excavation and embankment, dimensions
of side ditches in the former, depth of ballast, and expense per mile it would
be worth incurring to get it.

5th. Relative advantages of different plans and materials for railroad bridges.

6th. Weight and other characteristics of engines and rolling stock suitable
for a large business and different grades.

7th. Ratio in which rails and rolling stock deteriorate with different veloci-
ties.

In the above, interest on first cost is to be considered in connexion with
expense of repairs and deterioration, so that their annual sum shall be a
minimum.

Your views on these points, as well as on any others having an important
bearing on the subject, are desiiable, in order that they may be laid before a
meeting of the government commissioners, directors, and engineer of Pacific
railroad, early in January next, and should, it' possible, be sent to this office
before the first of January. They will be very valuable in aiding the govern-
ment in establishing such a standard for these roads that, when finished, they
will subserve the purposes for which they are built, and be a credit to the
nation.

Please address me under cover to the Secretary of the Interior.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. H. SIMPSON,

Lt. Col. Engineers.

To — .

APPENDIX E.

Quartermaster General's Office,

Washington, D. C, December 26, 1S65.

Colonel : I have to acknowledge the receipt of a copy of circular So. 2>
soliciting on the part of the Hon. James Harlan, Secretary of the Interior, my
opinion on any of several points in relation to the construction of a "first-class
railroad," wit!) a view to establish a standard for the construction of the Pacific
railroad.

The fifth point, the relative advantages of different plans and materials for
railroad bridges, is the only one upon Avhich I have time to offer any opinions.
Upon all the others you will doublless receive information from persons engaged
in the construction and working of railroads. Most of them are indefinite.
The heavier and stronger the construction, th°: better and more durable. Finan-

cial considerations finally fix the limit of weight and excellence of track,
beyond which even the governments of the Old World, in railroad construction,
do not go. I cannot, however, too strongly urge the importance, in view of
safety and ultimate economy, of requiring all the bridges to be built of perma-
nent and durable materials. Stone, brick, wrought and cast iron alone should
be permitted to enter into the main features of construction, wood being admit-
ted only under the rails for the sake of giving elasticity to the track.

The experience of the French engineers has shown that it is not necessary,
in order to build stone arched bridges of considerable span, to use expensive
cutstone masonry. There are arches of ninety feet span, and even longer, built
of brick and of rubble masonry, which stand secure. There is no difficulty
with a sound, strong stone, breaking into reasonably good shapes, in construct-
ing a stone bridge with arches of 120 feet span entirely of rubble masonry, laid
in a strong cement mortar.

Cast and wrought iron bridges can be prepared in the workshops of the
settled districts of the country, and sent by rail to their destination. Temporary,
cheap trestle bridges, such as served to supply the armies in the field during
the war upon all the railroads operated by the Quartermaster's department,
1,700 miles in extent, can be erected and used to forward the necessaiy material
for erecting permanent stone or iron structures.

I prefer, when it is possible to erect without too great expense proper abut-
ments, bridges supported upon arched ribs of cast or wrought iron, to the framed
structures so generally used in this country and Great Britain.

The French have many such, of which the later wrought-iron bridges over
the Seine at Paris, and the Tarascon railroad bridges, are good examples ; the
latter has cast-iron arches.

The Fink framed or truss bridge, and the Bollman bridge used on the Balti-
more and Ohio railroad, and on the Louisville and Nashville railroad, are good
forms of truss bridges, in which the roadway is suspended by oblique suspen-
sion rods, and the thrust is taken by a horizontal top chord of cast or wrought
iron.

In both these bridges the details are wrought out and proportioned in a mas-
terly manner. They are good bridges when a sufficient abutment to support
the thrust of an arch would be too costly.

I place the railroad bridges, then, in the following order :
Masonry arches, for all spans up to 120 feet. — 1. Cut stone. 2. Rubble
stone. 3. Brick.

Iron bridges. — 1. For spans not exceeding twenty feet, wrought-iron H beams
or girders. 2. For spans exceeding twenty feet, and not exceeding two hun-
dred feet, arches of cast or wrought iron, spandrel filling wrought iron. 3. For
spans below two hundred feet, when good abutments for arches will be too cost-
ly, trussed or framed bridges of wrought iron, in which cast iron may be admit-
ted for the posts and struts, and horizontal beams subjected to compression.
4. For spans much exceeding two hundred feet, either wrought-iron arches or
framed bridges entirely of wrought iron should be used.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

M. C. MEIGS,
Quartermaster General, Brevet Major General.
Lieut. Colonel J. H. Simpson,

Corps Engineers, United Slates Army.

2 s

APPENDIX F.

Philadelphia, December 27, 1865.

Colonel : I proceed briefly to notice your interrogatories in circular No. 2.

1. I have no very recent experience in the practical operation of first-class
railroads, and cannot give the relative durability of rails of different weights
from my own experience. My general idea is, that the rapid deterioration of the
permanent way, so called, arises from the enormous increase in the weight of
engines without a corresponding increase in the wearing- surface of the rails,
When the engines weighed only from six to ten tons, the durability of the rails,
which were then chiefly of English manufacture, appeared to be almost unlim-
ited. Attempts have been more to increase the durability of rails by the sub-
stitution of a better material, and steel-headed rails have been tried. Half a
mile of such rails were laid on the Pennsylvania railroad, but the result, I be-
lieve, was not entirely satisfactory, the difficulty arising from the imperfect con-
nexion between the steel and iron. Steel rails also have been proposed, and I
believe used to a very limited extent. As at present manufactured they are
too expensive for ordinary use.

I have great confidence that the processes for the manufacture of steel will be
so far improved and simplified that this superior material will be used univer-
sally in rails, resulting in a great increase of durability. In regard to the shape
of section, I will say that as large a portion of the material as possible should
be placed in the head ; and the stein may be thinner than is usually made, with-
out injury to the strength of the rail. I have never known a case of failure by
the thinness of the stem, but I have seen a piece of an old rail taken from the
Philadelphia and Columbia railroad, the head nearly worn off, and the stem
very high and thin, with parallel sides.

With the present class of engines I am satisfied that no iron can be found that
will long stand the excessive pounding and rolling of a heavy traffic with high
velocities. To increase durability, the surface of the rails and the diameters of
the drivers should be as large as practicable, and the speed of freight trains lim-
ited to, say, twelve miles per hour.

Rails are manufactured at the Cambria Iron Works, Johnstown, Pennsylvania,
the Phoenixville Works, and the Rensselaer Iron Works, Troy, fully equal to
any imported.

2. As to the best form of joint fastening, the smoothest and most perfect
surface when first laid is given by the compound rail, but experience condemns
it for want of durability. It will only answer for light engines and trains. The
best joint, everything considered, is a fished joint, with a long splice extending
over the next tie on each side of the joint. I do not like a chair at any time.
It acts as an anvil and the Avheels as sledges to hammer out the ends of the
rails. I obtained a very good result on the Southern Vermont railroad by put-
ting the joint between the ties, and the ties at the joint about one foot apart. A
cast-iron splice about eight inches long was fitted close to the outside of the
rails. Holes were punched in the rails about two inches from the end, and a
U-shaped bolt (of seven-eighths inch round iron) connected them. The joint
cost no more than the ordinary chair, and was very smooth and strong. On
one occasion 150 feet of trestle-work was carried away by a flood, but the rails
and cross-ties hung as a catenary, and hand-cars were run. over without break-
ing the connexion.

3 . I use ties eight feet long and as large in cross-section as can conveni-
ently be procured, not less than six inches surface and six inches thick, but
eight inches would be preferable. The distance apart two and a half feet from
middle of ties, but with heavy engines it is better to reduce the distance to two \
feet.

4. The width of road-bed, even on the same line of road, should not be con-
sidered a fixed and invariable dimension. The elements which determine the
width of road-bed are the gauge of the track, the distance between tracks, and
the width of the side ditches.

The dimensions of the ditches depend on the character and extent of the
slope, the quantity of water, and the greater or less tendency to slides and
washes. The slope of an excavation should correspond to the natural angle of
repose of the material. If too flat, the surface exposed to rain and frost is unne-
cessarily increased and the side ditches rapidly filled. In the south, where the
frost does not act severely, clay cuts are best finished and made durable when
the slopes are perpendicular. The rain has in this case very little effect, while
with flat slopes the wash is excessive. On steep hill- sides, covered with shrubs
and bushes, the roots form the best protection against Avashes, and it is often
good practice in such cases to widen the road-bed and leave the upper slope
vertical.

After this statement, it is scarcely necessary for me to add that in my prac-
tice I conform to no prescribed dimensions for side ditches and no uniform angle
for slopes, but leave all such details to the judgment of the engineer in charge.
I!' i lie slopes are found too steep they are easily flattened after the track is laid.

As the wash from the side slopes is in proportion to the length, or possibly
In a still higher ratio, since the velocity and degrading power of currents are
increased by distance of fall, it would not be good engineering to make the side
ditches in a shallow and dry cut the same as in a very deep one. As a mini-
mum, it may be stated that in a shallow excavation in dry earth, in the latitude
of Pennsylvania, I would give a width of five feet at top, three feet at bottom,
and slopes of forty-five degrees. And in this case, allowing the gauge of tracks
to be four feet eight and a half inches, the distance between tracks six feet, the
length of cross-ties eight feet, and two feet from ends of ties to edge of ditch, the
i minimum width would be twenty-two feet eight and a half inches ; but twenty-
four feet is better.

On the subject of ballast my opinions are very decided. I prefer broken
stone to gravel. The drainage is more perfect, the ties last much longer, and
there is far greater freedom from dust. Before placing the ballast the road-bed
should be sloped from the middle to the side ditches. No trendies whatever
should he made for the ballast. Two parallel walls should be built of dry stone,
twenty-two feet apart from out to out, and about one foot high. Stones equiva-
lent to about four inches cube should be thrown in to a depth of one foot, ^le
surface should then be broken and six inches more of stone added and broken
into two-inch cubes. On this surface the ties are laid. This will make a first-
class road-bed.

Where stone cannot be procured it may be best to lay the track without bal-
last and haul it in cars afterwards. Ballasting can very readily be done in this
way. Without ballast in a soil subject to wet and frost a good road-bed cannot
be obtained, and any reasonable expenditure to obtain it would be justifiable.

•5. I am decidedly in favor of iron or stone for railroad bridges. As to
plans, my ideas are given in my general theory of bridge construction, published
by Appleton. There are many plans in general use which give good bridges if
properly proportioned. The Howe, Pratt, Fink, and Bollman are all good
bridges. I will state here that in planning bridges for a long line of road I
would seek for uniformity in plan and dimensions. A series of spans — say 50,
75, 100, 125, and 150 feet — will suit almost every locality, and the parts can
be made of exact dimensions and interchangeable. If desirable, I may commu-
nicate further with you on this subject.

6. Independently of injury to permanent way, heavy engines are most
economical for a heavy business. They transport a greater number of tons at a
given expense, and by reducing the number of trains reduce the liability to acci-

dent. There is a limit, however, to the increase of weight in engines, arising
from their crushing effect upon the rails, and this limit appears to have heen
already exceeded. When rails are made of steel, with four inches of bearing
surface in the head, drivers not less than five or six feet in diameter, good joints
at the ends, and good ballast under the rails, and the speed reduced to twelve
miles per hour, I have no doubt that the expenses of repairs will be greatly
reduced.

In the construction of freight cars the great problem is to reduce, as far as
practicable, the proportion of dead weight to paying load without sacrifice of
strength ; and I do not' know that the ordinary eight-wheel freight car admits of
any very great improvement.

7. I have never instituted experiments or made careful observations to de-
termine the ratio of deterioration with different velocities, but I am decidedly of
opinion that only light engines should be allowed to run with high velocities.

Time has not permitted me to answer your communicatiou of the 15th instant
except in a very hurried manner.

I will mail a pamphlet which contains some of my ideas on the subjects of{
grade, distance, and cost of construction; and if I can be of any use to you
hereafter call upon me.

Yours, very respectfully,

H. HAUPT.

Lieut. Col. J. H. Simpson,

Corps of Engineers.

APPENDIX G.

Chicago, December 28, 1SG5.

Colonel : Yours of the 22d instant reached me last evening. I have con-
cluded to catch a little time for some general remarks on your circular No. 2. I
will take your circular in order.

No. 1. As to iceiglit of rail. — I consider 60 pounds to the yard of rail a fair
weight for a good railway. In form I would put as little material in the waist
as would answer, and the web or bottom as light as could be well rolled, and
g" all the material practicable in the head. The top to have at least one and a
half inch flat, with rounded comers, height about four inches, not to exceed
four and one-eighth. As to American rails there is great range. The best
American rails I have known were made by Cooper & Hewett, of Trenton, N.
J., and Wheeler & Co., of Boonton, N. J. Some American rails are hard and
brittle. These wear well, but are very liable to break ; others are soft, and
though not liable to break, wear out rapidly. The iron of a rail should be hard
and strong to do good service.

No. 2. Fastenings. — The hook-head spike is the only kind used on Ameri-
can railways. If chairs are used, I thiuk the best yet used is the broad wrought-
iron plate with lips turned up from the centre. The plate should be, before cut in
the centre, about eight inches square and full five-eighths of an inch thick. But
chairs are not indispensable if the fish-plates are used. We do not use chairs in
laying new rails on the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago railroad. The
fish-plates are twenty-two inches long, two bolts in each rail and a plate on
both sides. It is a little more expensive than chairs, butin my judgment greatly
superior. I should not think of laying a first-class rail without the fish-joint.
It is the best method I have known to join rails, and very safe.

No. 3. Ties. — Ties six inches thick, seven inches wide, and eight feet long,
(for common gauge,) placed two feet from centre to centre, is about right for a

sixty- pound rail. If the rail were heavier, the cross-ties should he heavier, or
larger and not quite so close.

No. 4. Width of road-bed at grade, Sfc. — In excavation the road-bed should
be considered the base of the ballast. If this is two feet below the rail, the width
should be for road and slopes about sixteen feet. The slopes will occupy three
feet each side, and ten feet for breadth of road and proper support for the ties.
The ballast should extend full breadth of bed, in order to drain properly. It is
important, especially when the material is tight or impervious to water, that the
road-bed be formed with sufficient height in the centre and graded smooth, so
as to allow water to pass off freely to the side ditches. The excavation should
be made as much wider than the road-bed as will allow of suitable side ditches.
The ditches should not be less than three feet deep below the base or bottom of
cross-ties, and of such dimensions that all rains would pass oft in ordinary times
in a depth of water not exceediag six inches, and not to rise over one foot in
the heaviest rains.

The width of any considerable embankment should be five to six feet be-
yond the rail. This is important in order to have a margin that will hold a
car that leaves the rail.

In regard to ballast : This depends very much on the material of the natural
road-bed. If the material is clay loam and impervious to water, no good road
can be maintained without ballast. It will do very well in dry weather with-
out ballast, but rains and frosts will destroy the track at such times, or greatly
impair its usefulness. The road in such cases cannot be regarded as completed
without ballast. A light business may be done, but no heavy or fast traffic can
be well done without a good ballast.

The depth of ballast will depend on the climate; in general two feet from
bottom to top of rail is little enough. If the natural material is sandy and porous
it may do pretty well without ballast.

As to what I would pay rather than not have ballast, would of course depend
on the natural bed or materials. But if the material requires ballast to make a
good track, I should not hesitate to spend three thousand dollars per mile for
this item. If broken stone had to be used, I should go for a larger expense,
for the reason that it would necessarily in most cases cost more than gravel and
would be much more permanent. Circumstances must have an influence on this
question, but it may be regarded as indispensable to a good railway that it be
well ballasted. Thorough ballasting and thorough drainage are the great re-
quisites of any railway that is expected to be run in all weather.

No. 5. Materials for bridges. — Good stone is the best material for bridges.
If the situation does not admit of stone arches, then stone abutments and piers,
with a wrought-iron superstructure, is the best resort. Of course, when stone
and iron are not to be had, wood must be substituted until facilities are afforded
for more durable works.

No. 6. Rolling stock and machinery. — This is a great subject, and one that
in my opinion has been very inadequately studied; and I have very little faith
that my views will prevail.

It is very evident that the weight of machinery has exceeded the ability of
iron rails for profitable endurance, audit is very generally considered that steel
must be substituted for iron. If steel is used, then, according to the prevalent
views of railway managers, the weight of machinery may be increased ; also
speed of trains. This will increase the difficulty of maintaining the road-bed.
How steel will stand the frost of winter, as compared to iron, is yet to be deter-
mined. However this may be, I suppose iron will be considered for the present
as the material for rails.

All engine-builders that I have known favor large engines ; they regard their
reputation as depending on the load their engines will haul. Their influence
usually controls railway superintendents. The latter are rarely men who have

any knowledge of mechanical science, and regard the load an engine will haul
as the evidence of its economy. Any man can see that if two light engines are
required to haul a train for which a single heavy engine is sufficient, there is
the additional expense of a driver and fireman, and so in proportion ; hut there
are very few railway men that can see the relative wear and tear in the two
cases. In fact, it is a difficult question to fully understand, arising from the
mixed character of railway traffic; but by long-continued observation, the
influence of the two cases becomes manifest. The great and the true question
is, not what size of train may be hauled, but by what sort of engine and train
can the transportation of a ton of freight be reduced to the lowest rate of
expense.

In the early history of railwa}7s the rails were more durable than at present.
While it was considered, twenty years ago, that rails could be maintained for
ten per cent., it now costs, on a railway with a traffic of $18,000 to $20,000 per
mile per year, 25 per cent., or about this. But I have not time to pursue this
subject, and must content myself with a few general remarks. There is more
necessity and inducement to have large engines on a single than on a double
track railway, on account of the difficulty of passing a great number of trains.
The greatest objection is to passenger engines ; their trains cannot well be
divided, and are subject to much irregularity of load ; and with a single track
it is not convenient to multiply trains ; also, the speed of passenger trains
demands greater power. Much will depend in passenger trains upon the grades
they have to meet. With a double track, trains may be run more frequently,
and in this way reduce the weight of engines.

The weight of passenger engines must depend on the character of the traffic.
I should prefer not to have an engine of over twenty-five tons weight ; but
there may be, and no doubt are, cases in which a heavier engine would be neces-
sary, when heavy express trains have to be provided for. There is no necessity
nor economy in a freight engine of over twenty-five tons. The cylinders of
such an engine Avould be fourteen by twenty-two inches. It would not take so
large a train as a thirty-ton, with cylinders fifteen by twenty -four; but it may
be assumed that the twenty-five-ton would make more car mileage in a year
than the thirty-ton. This arises from the more steady running, as light engines
are laid by for repairs a less ratio of time. There is much to be said on this
subject, but I have not time. I close this with the expression of my opinion,
that to effect economy of transportation will eventually lead to a reduction in
the weight of engines.

In freight cars I have yet to hear of any experience that justifies the large
cars. Smaller cars are more easily and cheaply loaded and unloaded, do not
break up as much in collision, carry more freight in proportion to dead weight,
and are more easily and conveniently handled at the stations. I would not have
a freight car of eight wheels to carry over eight tons of freight. I regard the
heavy freight cars as simply senseless ; they are liked because they are larger,
and not from any substantial reason in favor of economy.

As to passenger coaches, you will probably adopt the fifteen-window car of
sixty seats. I would reduce the size, and, had I time, could give my reasons;
but I am well aware I am not in the fashion on this subject. A big engine, a
big coach, and a big car, is the prevailing fashion, and has about the same merit
as other fashions that are instituted without reflection, or a due consideration of
means to an end.

7. Influence on rails from velocity. — The only thing I have time to say on
this point relates to the comparative expense of keeping up the two tracks of a
double road on a grade of forty feet per mile. The up track bore its trains at
a slow speed, and the down track at a high speed. The down track, I was
credibly informed, cost twenty-five per cent, more to keep it up than the up
track. To be run with economy, freight trains on all grades should be run

slow ; there is very little freight that would pay real cost as between actual
expense of fifteen over ten miles per hour ; it is better to run two hundred miles
in twenty-four hours, or about eight miles per hour. But I must close with a
general remark.

The government, for valid reasons, wants a railway from ihe Missouri to the
Pacific. In my opinion they have taken a very unwise way to get it. I have
little faith the thing will be accomplished in any reasonable time on the present
plan. It may go along on tasy parts, but when you get to the mountains it
will probably rub long and slow. There should now be competent engineers
surveying the mountain districts and getting them ready for contract at the
earliest day. There will no doubt be very important examinations to be made
to ascertain the most favorable route. If these matters are left until the easy
part is carried along, the heavy work will delay progress, and a long time must
elapse before the company will get through. A better, and, in my opinion, the
true plan would be for government to constitute a board of six competent men,
that were too high-minded to steal, and authorize them to do the work in the
best and most economical method. Then the railway might be done in proba-
bly five years and the country enjoy the benefit.
Very respectfully and truly yours,

JOHN B. JERVLS, Civil Engineer.

Lt. Col. J. H. Simpson, Corps Engineers.

APPENDIX H.

Great Western Railway, Hamilton, C. W.,

December 30, 1865.

Sir: Your circular letter, dated the 18fh instant, was handed to the chief
engineer of this company for his remarks. I have now the pleasure of for-
warding them to you.

He feels that it is impossible to do justice in his answer to questions put in
so summary a way. Indeed, several of them cannot be satisfactorily answered
in a general manner, inasmuch as they are dependent upon all the contingent
circumstances of the railway in question, such as gradients, the predominant
features of the soil, the respective values of wood, jron, &c.

If, however, it should be your pleasure to require any further information,
and you should depute any gentleman to inspect our road and consult our
engineer, I shall be most happy to make the necessary arrangements, and to
offer every possible facility in my power.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

THOS. SWINYARD, General Manager.

Lieut. Col. J. H. Simpson, Corps Engineers.

[In giving the enclosed views of the chief engineer of the road the questions
of circular No. 2 were repeated in a parallel column, with answers as follows :]

1. Rail 65 to 70 pounds per lineal yard, T pattern, having a width of flange
or base of 4 inches with the same weight.

2. Pish joints, all of iron, or partly iron and partly wood, such as the
Trimble joint ; the rails being spiked to the ties in the usual manner, excepting
on steep grades, where the flange of the rails ought to be drilled for a fang-
bolt, (or for a bolt secured by a key and cotter,) which passes through the tie
and is secured underneath by a fang-nut.

3. Ties to be of white oak, 9 feet long, 9 inches wide, and 6 inches thick, to
be laid 11 to a 24 feet rail, or 2,420 per mile.

4. Road-bed of embankments at sub-grade, i. <?., underneath tbe ballast, to

be 17 feet wide for the narrow gauge of 4 feet 8|r inches. In excavations the
sub- grade to be not less than 24 feet, and wider in wet soils or where there is a
large amount of surface drainage to cany off. The ditches to be 3-J feet wide and
1 foot deep at sub-grade. The ballast, even of the best quality, to be not less
than 12 inches underneath the ties, or IS inches in all, being about 4,000 cubic
yards per mile.

5. Masonry for piers and abutments of all bridges, and iron girders for
superstructure of all spans exceeding say 60 feet. If timber is plentiful and
cheap, it may be used for all spans under 60 feet, as such spans can very
quickly be replaced in the event of loss by fire.

6. This depends almost solely upon the characteristics of the railway, and
upon the nature of its traffic.

7. The same remark applies as in No. 6.

GEO. LOWE RELD,
Chief Engineer Great Western Railicay of Canada.
December 30, 1865.

APPENDIX I.

Lambertville, N. J., January 1, 1866.

Colonel: Below please find answers to the questions in your circular
No. 2:

Answer 1. I enclose section of rail weighing sixty-two pounds per yard,
which I have recently adopted, and consider the best for a road with heavy
traffic. If rails were cheaper, I would make it a little heavier. On a road but
little used I would make it somewhat lighter ; with a very light traffic, as low
as forty-two pounds per yard.*

I am now using rails made at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, from a mixture of
the hard magnetic ores of New Jersey and the hematites of the Lehigh valley.
This makes a good rail, but, doubtless, numerous other mixtures make as good.

Very good or very poor rails may be made from the same ores. I have rails
from a well-known mill that have been in use fifteen years, and that are now in
good order ; and ©n the same track other rails from the same mill, and worn
out in less than one year's use. If a good rail, such as we used to get, is
worth $200 per ton, such rails as we frequently do get now are not worth $20.

Answer 2. I prefer the fish joint, with an iron plate fifteen inches long on
the inside, and a wooden block five feet long on the outside. The section
herewith sent is calculated for such a joint. Without it I would fill in the
angle more between the shank of the rail and the top and bottom flanges.

Sir Morton Peto told me he was using the fish joint on his roads in different
parts of the world, using the iron plates on both sides and making the joint
between ties. The objection to the iron on both sides is that the bolts break.

To prevent this I have used leather washers under the heads and nuts with
good effect. Sir Morton Peto thinks well of the wooden blocks, although he
has not used them. I quote him because his experience is very great and
recent.

I do not know anything better than the common dog-headed spike.

Answer 3. I use ties eight to nine feet long, six inches thick, averaging
eight inches wide, and from twenty-two hundred to twenty-six hundred to the

* It being impracticable to include a section of the rail recommended, its principal dimen-
sions are given in appendix S.

mile. When ties are cheap and the traffic heavy, I would use ties eight inches
deep and cover one-third of the ground with them.

Answer 4. I make road-bed at grade fourteen feet wide for single track, with
side ditches in excavation eight feet wide at grade and two feet deep ; the size
of the ditches, however, varying with the circumstances. Ballast should he
at least one foot deep under the tie ; on a sandy soil it may be less ; on clay, in
a cold climate, it should be more. On a road with heavy traffic I can scarcely
fix a limit to the expense that should be incurred to get it.

Answer 5. Except on a road with immense traffic, I would, under present
circumstances, use wooden bridges on some simple plan, such as the Howe
bridge.

Answer 6. I would not allow more than two gross tons on a car-wheel, in-
cluding the weight of the car, and then only Avith good springs, nor more than
ten thousand pounds on a driver. If building a road unconnected with any
other, I would limit the weight to two-thirds of that stated. With such ma-
terials as we now have, all other things being equal, the injury to the rail by a
weight over a ton on a wheel probably increases as much as the square of the
weight. This, of course, varies with different materials.

Answer 7. Within moderate limits, the injury to the rails and rolling stock
increases as the square of the velocity. Above a limit, which varies with the
material and condition of the rails and machinery, the injury increases much
more rapidly than the square of the velocity ; probably in many cases reaching
the cube.

Very respectfully youis,

ASHBEL WELCH, Civil Engineer.

Lieut. Col. J. H. Simpson,

Corps Engineers, U. S. A.

APPENDIX J.

Baltimore, January 2, 1866.

Colonel: Your circular of the 14th ultimo was duly received, and I embrace
the first leisure allowed by other engagements to reply to its several questions ;
premising that they cannot be answered with the definiteness that could be de-
sired, for reasons sufficiently apparent, and as the answers themselves will
show.

1. The best weight of rail for a first-class road is, and must always continue
to be, a matter of professional opinion. With a good foundation of ballast upon a
well drained and settled road-bed, and suitable cross-tie supports, together with
a well-spliced joint, I consider sixty pounds per yard as abundantly heavy for
a first-class road.

No increase in the weight of rail can compensate for the absence of a good
support; indeed, the heavier the rail the less readily will it accommodate itself to
the irregularities of the sub-structure, and the more subject it will be to perma-
nent bending or breakage and dislocation at the joints, and hence to endanger
passing trains.

The " best cross-section " appears now to have been determined by the almost
unanimous judgment of railway engineers, founded upon an experience of a
third of a century, to be the broad-based or inverted j,. It is true that the
double-headed or I rail is still a favorite in England and the continent of Eu-
rope, but as it requires a chair or pedestal to support it, and has no advantages
which, in the judgment of American engineers, warrant its increased cost, on
this account it has never been used, that I am aware of, in the United States.

The general form of section may be considerably varied in its lines, but the pro-
portions most usually preferred for a sixty-pound rail would give an equal base
and height of three and one-half to three and three-fourths inches, a thickness
in the smallest part of the neck of five-eighths of an inch scant or full, and a top
breadth, including the curved edges, of two and one-fourth to two and one-half
inches. Many engineers prefer a slightly rounded top surface, but I have al-
ways preferred at least one and one-half inch of flat bearing on top.

As to the "relative durability of rails of different weights with the same
traffic," it is manifestly impossible to offer any definite estimate. If for "a first-
class road, " that is, a road constructed in the best manner for a heavy trade and
travel, a sixty-pound rail is, on the whole, the best medium weight; then it will
last longer than either a lighter or heavier rail, but in what proportion it Avould
be difficult to frame a formula to express. The lighter rail would possess too
much, and the heavier too little elasticity, as experience has, indeed, shown with
the extremes of light and heavy rails. If, however, the substructure be well
adapted to the weight of rail (that is, the cross-ties duly spaced and sized) and the
quality of the metal be similar, I should be disposed to treat the durability of
the rail as not sensibly influenced by an increase or reduction of weight of five
or six pounds per yard, while below fifty-five pounds, or above sixty-five pounds,
an increased wear would take place, and probably in pretty nearly the degree in
which it receded from the medium weight.

Of the "merits of different varieties of American iron" it is equally difficult
to speak decisively. My own experience with the products of several rolling
mills has been in favor, on the whole, of the rails made at the Cambria Iron
Works at Johnstown, Pennsylvania. This iron is a little deficient in hardness,
but it has proved strong and free from danger of breakage — the latter a very
valuable property.

2. The plans of "chairs and other joint fastenings" vary a good deal in their
details, although depending upon the same general principles. Understanding
by the term chair a simple support for the contiguous ends of the rail, designed
to extend their bearing on the cross-tie, and secure them from lateral displace-
ment and endwise movement, the double-lipped plate, or the single-lipped, with
the absence of the other lip supplied by a gib holding the chair and base of rail
together, are, I think, as efficient a fastening as can be used. The weight, if
of wrought iron, to be not less than fifteen pounds; and if of cast iron, twenty
pounds; wrought iron being much to be preferred, as less liable to break, and
being more economical in the end, although dearer in first cost.

The "chair," however, is now rarely used, except for its comparative cheap-
ness at first for new roads with deficient capital. The necessity of a splice of
some sort at the joint is now universally admitted, (after a much longer experi-
ence than should have been required,) and " fishes," in the quaint English dialect,
are regarded as indispensable adjuncts. These fastenings have the usual variety
of forms, and I am not prepared to say which I would choose of them all. There
is a very good one now being applied on the Louisville and Nashville railroad,
of which the superintendent of that road can give a suitable description. Mr.
Arthur, general superintendent of the Illinois Central, has designed what struck
me as a very substantial splice. The wooden bar or block splice, (Trimble's
patent,) used on the Baltimore and Ohio and Philadelphia and Baltimore rail-
roads, I regard as an excellent joint fastening. All these different forms should
be adjusted (as most of them are) by screw-nuts; and those into which wood is
introduced, to a greater or less extent, are to be preferred, in my judgment, as
having an element of elasticity that is wanting in those wholly of iron.

The best form of " spike" has long since been settled as the "hook-headed"
spike, weighing from one-half to three-quarters of a pound each, and from six to
seven inches lung.

3. The "dimensions of, and distances between, cross-ties," must depend on

the weight of rail. For a sixty-pound rail a tie seven inches thick, with at least
an equal width of flat surface, top and bottom, and for the joints not less than
eight inches, placed two and a half feet from centre to centre, and eight feet in
length, will give about the' best result, in my judgment.

4. The "width of road bed at grade," if for two tracks, should be not less
than twenty-six feet, and for one track not less than sixteen feet; and the same
dimensions are applicable to both excavations and embankments, although the
latter are often, and perhaps mostly, made narrower; but I think this injudi-
cious, except for strict reasons of economy in first cost.

The "dimensions of side ditches" must depend upon the duty they have to
perform. A total width of twenty-six feet for two tracks allows only two feet
top width of ditches, which is sufficient for ordinary drainage in short and dry
excavations, but an increase to three or four feet, or even more, is sometimes
required. For two tracks and a gauge of not exceeding five feet, with six feet
between tracks, the width in the clear between ditches should not be less than
twenty-two feet, and for single track not less than tAvelve feet. The additional
width allowed for side ditches to be not less than four feet in either case, and
more for extraordinary flow of water, as stated.

"Depth of ballast, and expense per mile it would be worth incurring to get
it." The first question is easily answered ; not so the second.

Ballast should not be less than twelve inches in depth. This, with a cross-tie
seven inches deep, will give but five inches underneath for drainage and bearing.
A less depth will afford no protection from frost, and even this depth is but an
imperfect one. The deeper the ballast — up to two feet, or even more — the better.
Ballast only twelve inches deep — nine feet wide on top and eleven feet at bottom —
and deducting nothing for space occupied by cross-ties, will give 1,955 cubic
yards per mile; which, at prices formerly prevailing along roads through rocky
or gravelly regions, would cost about $1,200 ; a sum certainly well spent, and
which would soon refund itself even if doubled. Beyond, say, $2,500 per mile,
(or $3,500 at present prices,) it may not be advisable to go in many cases in
the first instance, but to wait until the facilities for transportation over the
opened line will permit the material to be hauled from a distance. More defi-
nitely than this it would be difficult to estimate the economic value of ballast,
which, in a soil retentive of water, may be regarded as indispensable to a good
track. In open soils, especially sand or gravel, the case is very different; in
such soils ballast, indeed, should be used as soon as it can be applied in adjust-
ing the track, but where haste in opening the line is necessary, the track may be
laid at first upon the natural surface, and the ballast subsequently introduced.

5. To answer this question fully would demand much more time than is at
my disposal. It so happens, however, that a short treatise on the principal
forms of bridge superstructure noAv in use has just been published, to which I
have attached my name as consulting engineer, although not its author. Of
this I will send you a copy, and from it you will learn the views I entertain on
the subject. As between different materials for bridges I but express the gene-
ral opinion of my profession in placing them in the order of preference usually
accorded them, viz: First, stone or brick; second, iron; third, wood, or a com-
bination of wood and iron — the more of the latter the better. The limit of span
to which stone or brick can be earned must, of course, exclude them from com-
petition in many cases. The high price of iron has checked its exclusive use
in bridge superstructure for some time past, but a return to former prices must
cause it ultimately to supersede wood altogether in cases where neither stone
nor brick can be employed.

6. In regard to the "weight and other characteristics of engines and rolling
stock," the opinions of engineers and railway managers are not in perfect accord.
My own views have always been in favor of the use of a heavy eight-wheel en-
gine, with all its wheels connected, and not more than three and a half to four feet

diameter, with correspondingly large cylinders, for heavy freights, at speeds not
exceeding ten miles per hour ; for fast freight, especially live stock, an engine
of lighter weight, and with four or six driving wheels four and a half feet diam-
eter and a truck in front; for passenger trains the engine of the ordinary im-
proved model, with four drivers of five to five and half feet diameter, and cylin-
ders proportioned to the resistances offered by the grades of the road upon the
stage or division of the road on which the locomotive is run.

As to other rolling stock — that is, cars ; the platform, box and house cars in
general use for ordinary freight, and for coal — a car with an iron body of circular
or rather cylindro-conical form, such as is exclusively used for the purpose upon
the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, is the lightest and most durable car, for the
weight it carries, that I know of upon any road in the country,

7. "Ratio in which rolling stock and rails deteriorate with different veloci-
ties." This is, again, one of, the points upon which no two engineers will agree.
So far as experience speaks, it would not seem to confirm purely theoretical
ideas on this subject. Thus we find that passenger locomotives which travel
twenty-five to forty miles per hour cost usually much less for their repairs than
freight engines which move at half the speed. It is true they draw less than
half the loads of the latter, and the internal strain upon their boilers and machi-
nery is correspondingly reduced. Upon roads much curved, the effect of in-
creased velocity will necessarily be the most felt. Yet, although the pressure
against the outer rail should be in the double ratio of the velocity, the actual
cost of maintenance is not in that proportion as between slow and fast trains, if
'the testimony or rather the opinions of track-repairers is to be believed, which is
the only specific evidence that can be had upon the subject, as it is impossible
to assign to each class of trains its true share of the expense of adjustments and re-
newals. On the whole, inasmuch as there are several elements of the cost of main-
taining track and rolling stock which are independent of the speed of the trains, while
there are others which may increase more rapidly than the simple velocity, aud
as the effect of speed is variously felt upon roads of different amounts and de-
grees of curvature, I think no reliable formula can be framed for application to
every variety of road. Yet, while this may be true, it would not do to leave
this element out of view in comparing different lines of road.

Thus, if the same aggregate time is allowed for traversing two lines of un-
equal length, the longer line would require the higher velocity, and the wear
and tear of rolling stock and road would be increased thereby, relatively to the
other line, and perhaps no safer, certainly no simpler, rule would be than the
ratio of the velocities as that of the wear and tear of the movable machinery
(as distinguished from the fixed, such as boiler, frame, cylinders, &c.) of the
engines, and the wheels and running gear of the cars, excluding the bodies of
the latter.

Your remark, that interest on first cost should be considered in connexion
with expense of repairs and depreciation, is undoubtedly just, and no lines could
be properly compared without capitalizing- their current expenses and adding
the result to their original cost of construction.

If time allowed, and my knowledge of the practical application of the points
of your inquiry were greater, I might offer some further suggestions.

As it is, I must close by expressing the regret I have felt that the question
of gauge for the great Pacific railroad had not been more maturely considered
before it was fixed by President Lincoln. The very peculiar character of this
great national highway demands, in my judgment, a plan of its own, or, at least,
unlike in several respects the majority of our railway lines.
I am, sir, very respectfully, yours,

BENJ. IT. LATROBE,

Civil Engineer.

Lieut. Col. J. H. Simpson, Coiys Engineers.

APPENDIX K.

Beading, Pa., January 5, 1866
Colonel : I beg to answer your circular of the 18th ultimo as follows :
Question 1. I think a steel rail from sixty to seventy pounds per yard, and

of the section in enclosed sketch, would be best suited for the Pacific railroad.*
On the Philadelphia and Beading railroad our experience of the last ten years

gives the following results :

Total tonnage passed of all kinds averaged for one year, including
weight of coal, merchandise, and passengers, but exclusive of
engines, fuel, tender, and cars, in tons of tAvo thousand
pounds 3, 181, 460

Average number of miles run by locomotives in one year 2, 229, 723

Average number of tons of new rails used to repair tracks in one
year, passing above business, in tons of twenty-two hundred
and forty pounds 4, 415

Average length of railroad track reduced to single track, over

which above business passed per year, in miles 295

Question 2.' I send herewith an isometrieal sketch of the most improved
railroad joint we have found to answer under our heavy tonnage. Several
year's experience thereof, with a tonnage for three years past of over 4,000,000
tons per annum, justify us in preferring it to anything we have tried or seen
elsewhere.

Question 3. Our sills are seven inches thick by nine or ten inches face, and
eight feet long, for a four feet eight and one-half inch gauge. They are laid
about 2,450 to the mile.

Question 4. On a double track railroad the two main tracks should be not
less than six feet apart, and sufficient room should be allowed in cuts for good
and thorough drainage on each side. On embankments the edge of the bank
should not be less than two feet outside ends of sills. Ballast should not be
less than ten inches thick, making about 1,760 cubic yards per mile of single
track. In building a first-class railroad for a heavy business of tonnage and
passengers, I think one dollar per cubic yard would not be too much to pay for
such an important feature as good ballast.

Question 5. This inquiry embraces so extensive a field that it is impossible
to answer in the limits of this letter.

Question 6. I send you enclosed heie%ith photographs of one of each kind
of our most approved freight and passenger engines, with weights and all di-
mensions.

Question 7. The reciprocal injury to rails and rolling stock caused by speed
is about in proportion to the square of the speed. On bridges, however, it is
higher.

Bespectfully, your obedient servant,

G. A. NICOLLS,
General Supt. Philadelphia and Reading Railroad.

Lieut. Col. J. H. Simpson,

Corps Engineers United States Army.

* The section is omitted in printing, but the principal dimensions are given in appendix S.

APPENDIX I;.

47 Exchange Place, New York, January 8, 18G6.

Colonel : I intended answering the circular you did me the honor to address
to me before this, and now have only time to answer it hurriedly. I deem the
matters spoken of in the circular as of the greatest importance, and worthy of
the highest consideration of the government.

As to establishing a standard for railways, I fear it will be a difficult under-
taking, as the most eminent engineers differ so widely in their views of im-
portant points. The war of the gauges in England ; the difference of opinion
between Brunei and Stephenson as to the longitudinal and transverse systems
of bearings ; the great difference in weight, power, and construction of the
engines on the two divisions of the London and Northwestern railway ; the
endless variety of fastenings for rails ; the great national and sectional differ-
ences of opinion as to designs, material, and construction of bridges ; and the
never-ending discoveries and improvements in everything connected with rail-
ways, all point to the fact that we cannot have a fixed standard ; but by col-
lecting and discussing facts and opinions we can improve immensely on the
present system of railways in this country, for much of it is abominable in the
extreme, and might be considered a national disgrace. This, in a measure, grows
out of want of capital to build with permanency and correctly ; I will not say
scientifically, for that is a word that most railway capitalists in this country
appear to look upon with fear, having made up their minds that all science is
humbug. They ask for practical men, and often get what they understand to
be such, regardless of the man never having read a book or knowing what is
going on in the engineering world outside of the little circle in which he was
biought up. Another cause for selecting incompetent men to construct railways
in this country is that they can be had cheap. Still another cause is that rail-
way presidents and directors wish to engineer the works themselves, and employ
men who will do as they are told to.

These causes, together with the howlings of the public for low fares for goods
and passengers, have led to frightful accidents, to the loss of thousands of val-
uable lives, to the wasting of many millions of dollars in location and construc-
tion, and to the destruction of vast amounts of valuable property, to say nothing
of delays and confusion to business and the world of agony that seizes on every
man's brain when he now takes a ride by rail.

I will now answer categorically your questions as near as I can.

WEIGHT OF RAIL FOR A FIRST-CLASS RAILWAY.

I consider that a first-class rail can be made with 65 to 67 pounds of metal
per yard, provided the metal is first quality, properly piled and rolled. Many
thousands of tons of rails have been used in this country which were of Scotch
pig, chiefly made from old scoria heaps, after the invention of the hot blast.
Cheating in making rails, the result of railway companies cheapening the price,
has become universal in England, and pretty generally adopted in this country.

Robert Stephenson gave me a paper he wrote to the London and Northwestern
Railway Company after examining forty miles of new line of rails, in which he
says : " After heing cheated by all the Welsh houses, you took your orders to
the Staffordshire houses, close to the line of your road, and the rails they fur-
nished you six months since have already begun to laminate. I would advise
you to erect rolling mills and to roll your own rails." This I consider first-class
advice for every great railway company to carry out.

The United States government find that they can make muskets better and

cheaper than they can get them made. Why should not a great railway com-
pany find the same advantage in making their own rails ?

As to the " durability of rails of different weights with the same traffic," I
would say that some important and valuable data on this point will be found in
the work of Colburn & Holley on " European Railways," and also in ihe work
of Holley on '' American and European Railways." The great variety of rails,
the difference in the make and iron used, the difference in the speed, engines,
ballast, drainage, distance between sleepers, care with which repairs are clone,
and other causes, make it impossible to form a rule as to the traffic which may
be done over rails of different weights. I would here mention that it is the
engine and speed which are the chief elements in destroying rails. I will not
say wearing them out, for they are never worn out, they are crushed out.
Another element in the life of a rail is the width of the bearing surface of the
head, the experiments of Rennie and Morin to the contrary notwithstanding.
Their experiments on friction go to show that weight is everything, surface
nothing. The fallacy of this was shown by the Franklin Institute some years
since in a series of experiments on the adhesion of engines to rails. It was then
shown that all railway frictions are crushing frictions ; this admitted, as it must
be "when it is known that engines have utilized forty per cent, of the weight on
the driving wheels, and then it is evident that width of head of rail has some-
thing to do with its life.

BEST CROSS-SECTION OF RAIL.

This is a difficult question to answer. My belief is, that the best section
that can be made must have the head and base the same. This calls for a chair
on every sleeper, or to sandwich the rail between longitudinal bearings, a sys-
tem of railway track I have long been anxious to see tried in this country. This
sandwich system allows of the rail being deep, with a thinner stem and more
stiffness than can be obtained from any other section of rail of the same weight
used in a different system of track. Plans of sandwich rails and bearings will
be found in the works of Colburn & Holley. This plan of longitudinal bear-
ings placed at the sides of the rails does not interfere with the drainage, as did
Brunei's of the Great Western railway of England, when timbers 10 by 12
were placed under the rail. It allows of having as many square feet of bearing
surface per mile as is obtained from the transverse system. It has all the bear-
ing surface where it belongs, close to the line of pressure; it assists to jisli the
joints ; requires less labor to surface and line up the track; and, in addition, the
rail being a symmetrical one, with head and base the same, can be turned bottom
up when the head is worn out. The difficulty with the English rail, which is
symmetrical, having a heavy chair on each sleeper, is the crushing the rail in
the chair, making an indentation at each chair which prevents it being reversed
when the head is worn out. The difficulty with the rail in general use in the
United States is, that not having much width of base, it cuts through the sleeper
when under a heavy traffic, rendering the chemical preservation of the timber
of no use, as the timber is cut to pieces before it can decay.

Brunei, of the Great Western railway of England, having become dissatis-
fied with his bridge rail on longitudinal bearings, ordered a rail similar to the
American rail, with a base of six inches, and weighing sixty-six pounds per
yard. This rail was tested at the Brunswick works in England in 1858, at the
same time with a rail I was having made under my own specifications, with a
base of 3-q, inches, weighing sixty-three pounds per yard, with bearings
three and a half feet apart. The sixty-six pound rail broke with 17 \ tons ; the
sixty-three pound rail broke with 21 tons. Both these rails cost one-third more
than ordinary rail. They were made of good iron, and piled and rolled under
rigid specifications. I mention this to show that rails cannot easily be rolled

with a wide base, and give the full value of the iron for strength. This being
the case, there is no remedy for the cutting of sleepers, (with a godd section of
rail for strength,) where the transverse system is used ; but, by placing a bearing
plate or chair of some kind under the rail at each sleeper, I am convinced that
a saving could be effected by so doing, besides making the track more secure.
Another system of track which allows of a symmetrical rail is that where the
sleepers are of cast iron, one at each intersection of each rail. A track of this
kind has been patented in England, and known as " Griffin's." It is now being
used on a long railway in the Argentine Confederation, but it is, in my opinion,
far inferior to a track patented in this country, known as the " Iron railway,"
which also has iron sleepers with a round base and a chair on each, with a plate
of India-rubber between. A few lengths of this track was tried under the
heavy traffic of the Erie railway near Passaic for more than two years without
breaking the sleepers, and requiring but little attention or repairs. These
sleepers were light, and of an inferior pattern to those now proposed. This
design for a track is exceedingly simple, having no screws, spike, bolts, or keys
for fastenings ; in fact it has no fastenings, yet it cannot, when laid, be pulled
to pieces except by a full gang of men. It is now being laid on a railway near
London. It is not likely to come into general use in this country for some
time, on account of its cost. Iron is dear ; timber is cheap. Americans study
economy in first cost, and often pay more attention to their pockets than their
necks.

THE MEUITS OF DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF AMERICAN IKON.

Others will write more knoAvingly than I can on this point, but I will say
that from Maine to Georgia, and from the waters of the Atlantic to beyond the
Mississippi, the country is full of iron ore of a superior quality, from which rails
can be made of a much better quality than any we have had or can get from
England. They have more experience, and, as a general thing, more skill, in
working iron than we have, but they have not got the ore. One fact will prove
this : among all the experiments made by Colonel Wilmot, of the royal engi-
neers, through a series of years, with various mixtures of iron from all parts of
the kingdom, to get the strongest cast iron for cannon, he did not get a tensile
result as high as 29,000 pounds to the square inch; while Major Wade, of the
United States ordnance, in experiments for the same purpose, and using only
Greenwood iron, got one result as high as 45,970, another of 44,425, and a
number of mean results of over 40,000 pounds per square inch. The tensile
strength of the iron in an English gun imported by the ordnance office for ex-
periments gave only 18,145 pounds per square inch. It is not generally under-
stood why England is striving so earnestly to make a good gun from wrought
iron, and why she ignores the value and importance of 11-inch and 15-inch
cast-iron guns. The simple fact is, that there is no ore in the United Kingdom
from which this class of guns can be made and prove reliable.

In a parliamentary report on " cast iron experiments," published in 1S5S,
there is not one result on tensile strength among some thousands of experiments
above 34,300 pounds per square inch. Most of the results range between
15,000 and 25,000 ; some are as low as 9,000 and 10,000.

Much valuable information on iron in England can be obtained from a par-
liamentary report of 1S49, entitled " The Application of Iron to Railway Struc-
tures," in which the popular fallacy of its being safer to run quick over a bridge
than slow is exposed and settled by experiment.

The value of the American iron ore was known in England long prior to the
Revolution, at which time it was imported into England in considerable quan-
tities. Of late, American ores have been again sent to England. The frank-
linite iron of New Jersey would be all taken in England to assist the Bessemer

process, were there no uses for it here. The English engineers are now talking
of importing American Salisbury iron ore to assist in making car-wheels, as
they have utterly failed in making good cast-iron chilled wheels from any iron
in England. The American cast-iron wheels drove the English wrought-iron
wheels from the railways of Canada. Alexander M. Eoss, engineer of the Grand
Trunk railway of Canada, says in a letter now before me : "I was myself instru-
mental in the introduction of the English pattern of wheel, and after two or three
years' trial had to abandon them altogether."

An English engineer of note, writing to me lately to send him some cast-iron
wheels of Salisbury iron, asked me to get a guarantee that each wheel should
stand a load of two tons at ordinary speed. The wheel-founder said, " I will give
him a guarantee that each wheel will stand twenty tons at any speed." I think
I have now said enough to prove that American iron has some virtue.

BEST PLAN FOR CHAIRS, SPIKES, OR OTHER JOrNT FASTENINGS.

The best chair in a track, when the transverse system of bearings is adopted,
is, in my belief, one of wrought iron, with continuous lips made so long that
they will answer to suspend the joint between sleepers, and serve as fish-plates.
This kind of chair must be made of good, tough iron, and rolled so that it will
not easily split lengthwise. The lips should extend up to the head of the rail,
and screw-bolts put in through the lips of chairs and stem of rail. I have never
been able to understand why railway engineers and superintendents pay so little
attention to the joints, and the importance of fishing, or splicing, or holding the
joints of the rails with great firmness, as they must all see that the rails are de-
stroyed at the joints first. The joints are the weak points in the track, being
often below the general level, to the serious detriment not only of the rails but
of all the engines and cars that pass over them, to say nothing of the extra fuel
burnt while running heavy trains over an uneven track, or one where the joints
give as each wheel passes over them. The hook-headed spike made in this
country by machinery makes a good fastening when made of good iron, and not
less than T^ inch square, but it is a question if wood screws of large size could
not be made to answer better, and prove more economical in the end. In Eng-
land the chairs are fastened to the sleepers by pins of compressed oak, which
answer the purpose very well. With the sandwich rail and bearings screw-bolts
are used; chairs are dispensed with, but fish-plates are introduced at the joints
with good effect.

DIMENSION'S OF AND DISTANCES BETWEEN SLEEPERS.

When the transverse system is adopted, the sleepers for the ordinary gauge
of 4 feet 8£ inches should not be less than 9 feet long, 10 inches wide, and 6 inches
thick, laid 2£ feet from centre to centre. They should be uniform in size, laid
at right angles to the centre line of road, and at equal distances apart. When
the joints are fished and made as stiff as any part of the rail, it is not necessary
to have large joint sleepers, or the adjoining spaces less than at the middle of
the rail. The sleepers used in this country are on almost every road deficient
in size, the usual dimensions called for being 7 J feet long, S inches wide, and
6 inches thick ; but in most cases the sleepers fall short of these dimensions.
Recently railway companies, finding that the tracks would not stand the increased
traffic and increased size of engines, have resorted to putting more of these small
sleepers in the tracks. In some cases the spaces between sleepers are not much
greater than their own width. This calls for the use of many more spikes, and
adds largely to the labor expended in repairs.. I mean by this that with the
same amount of timber in fewer sleepers the labor account fur surfacing and
lining track would be much reduced, the drainage would be better, the surface

exposed to decay would be less, and the number of fastenings would be much
reduced.

I will not leave the subject of sleepers without mentioning the great import-
ance of chemically preparing the timber. Various methods have been invented,
most of which are valuable, and have proved of much benefit, particularly in
France and Germany. Some methods are expensive, calling for the timber-
being brought to a costly apparatus, and much time consumed in treating it.
The method invented by Paine, called " Payanizing," which results in forming
an insoluble salt in the capillaries of the wood by first forcing in chloride of lime
in solution, and then sulphate of iron, is probably the best. Timber prepared
in this way is almost incombustible ; it adds to the weight and hardness, and
gives it great durability.

The system usually adopted in England is to soak the sleepers in creosote, in
ordinary wooden vats, the creosote used being coal tar with the ammonia taken
out.

The process invented by Dr. Boucherie, in France, and used there, appears
to have many advantages, and is worthy of much attention. A liquid containing
a mineral sulphate of copper or chloride of zinc is run through the timber when
first felled, and when the sap is in a liquid state ; this is done by elevating a tub
containing the liquid about 18 to 20 feet above the ground, and conveying the
liquid to one end of the stick or log by a flexible tube. With this head to the
liquid the sap is readily and quickly driven out, and its place supplied by
the mineral solution.

I fear that there is but little use in preaching the preservation of timber to
Americans ; they have it in abundance, and intend to waste it, to destroy it, and
to be as prodigal of it as they possibly can ; but the day will come when the pos-
terity of this generation will mourn over the folly of their fathers, as the people
of Fiance of the present day lament over the timber-destroying propensities of
iheir ancestors.

WIDTH OF ROAD-BED AT GRADE IN EXCAVATION AND EMBANKMENT.

The road-bed in excavation should be in earth cuttings not less than 26 feet,
and in rock cuttings not less than 24 feet wide, for a single-track railway of
ordinary gauge. This leaves sufficient room for side ditches, which should be
not less than two feet deep, with slopes \\ to 1 in earth cuttings ; the slopes of
the earth cutting from bottom to top should be never less than l£ to 1 ; in some
cases, where the material has a tendency to run or slide, the slopes may be, and
should be, increased to 2 to 1 and sodded. In open rock cuttings the slopes
should never be less than £ to 1.

Embankments should have a top width of 18 feet, with slopes of not less than
\\ to 1. This top width should be kept up with care, after the road is com-
pleted, by hauling from the cuttings. Embankments are easily and quickly
washed away at top by storms; it is a common thing to leave them so. When
in this reduced condition, if an engine leaves the rails, it is sure to topple over
the embankment, often dragging the train to destruction. It should be recol-
lected by railway men and legislators that a railway is never finished, nor can
the capital account ever be closed with propriety where there is a growing traffic
requiring additional stations, enlarged buildings, more sidings, and increase of
rolling stock. The practice in this country, as to capital account, is open to
much and deserved criticism. In many cases the capital account has been
closed, and the net earnings which belong to dividend accounts applied to new
constructions to accommodate increased traffic ; in other cases capital has been
used to pay the current expenses of traffic, and the whole earnings applied to
dividends. It is evident that both these ways of management are wrong; but
who can remedy them as long as the spirit of stock gambling pervades every

branch of society in country as well as city, and often shows its hydra-head in
the deliberations of State legislatures ?

DEPTH OF BALLAST.

Two feet is the least depth that can be used on a first-class road. The im-
portance of ballast is often not appreciated as it should be where there is much
rain or frost. Some roads that were built under my direction in the rainless
region of Peru and Chile, South America, did not require ballast ; but the
English engineers, who came out to build railways in the same region, expended
more money on ballast than the whole of track grading and rolling stock cost.

The importance of ballast in railway construction was first discovered in
England, and the name (as told me by Robert Stephenson) derived from the
ballast heaps of the London coal colliers, discharging ballast (coarse gravel raked
from the bed of the Thames) at Newcastle. This was the first material used
under a railway track to improve its condition. In the south of England, where
gravel is not to be had, they burn clay into a material like broken brick to use
for ballast. Now, if ballast is considered so important in England, it should be
held in higher esteem here, where we have such severe frosts and storms. If any
one doubts this, let him get an English engine, one that can work with success
on any road in England, and try to operate it on one of our railways in the
spring or fall.

The notoriously inferior character of the American tracks have called for
much and wonderful improvements in the construction of locomotives and cars,
particularly the former, which now, for rough roads and mountain work, where
steep gradients and sharp curves are encountered, stand unrivalled in the world.
The engineer of the Grand Trunk railway, of Canada, had, at first, fifty English-
made engines ; finding he could not work them with success, he altered them to
American patterns ; he then ordered 110 locomotives in this country, paying
12£ per cent, duty on their going into Canada, and at the date of a report he
sent me in 1859 he had 43 more built in his own shops after American patterns.
In a letter written for me by Mr. Ross, engineer of this great Canadian railway,
he says : " On the breaking up of the frost in the spring we never could keep
the English engines on the track except at a slow pace, which defeated our ob-
jects." This in itself will show the great importance of ballast in a country
where the climate is severe ; that a first-class road cannot be built without it ;
that a road cannot be worked with any degree of certainty without it ; and that
it must be obtained at any cost. Ballasting need not necessarily be put in at
first, and when a road is first opened for traffic ; but it should be done as soon
after as possible, and the road should not be looked upon as completed until it
is fully and properly ballasted with suitable material, which should be coarse
gravel, broken stone, burnt clay, or broken scoria.

RELATIVE ADVANTAGES OF DIFFERENT PLANS AND MATERIALS FOR RAILWAY

BRIDGES.

In answering this question, I Avill start with the assertion that no first-class
railway can afford to have bridges of wood ; for when any bridge of magnitude
is burnt the whole traffic of the road is paralyzed for weeks, the effects of which
last for months, telling severely upon its character, its capital, and its influence,
to say nothing of the distress occasioned to every one doing business upon it.
Cases of this kind are numerous in this country, but the apparently idiotic part
of it is, that companies should rebuild with wood when the first structure was
lost by fire, and that, too, in the midst of populous and wealthy districts, as was
recently the case at Troy, in this State.

Iron, stone, and brick are the only three reliable materials to build with; for

all small structures, such as culverts under embankments, stone and brick have
a decided advantage over iron ; but for all large structures iron has much the
advantage over stone or brick. Bridges such as the Britannia, the Victoria, the
Saltash, and all suspension bridges, could not be constructed of stone.

Two hundred feet, or thereabouts, appears to be the limit to which stone
arches can be built with success, and within any reasonable cost. The largest
span for a single arch of stone ever built in modern times you have on the line
of the Washington aqueduct ; the largest in Europe is the Grosvenor bridge
over the Dee, in England, and the largest we have any record of is one said to
have been 251 feet span over the Adda, near Trezzo, in Italy ; but there is no
record to show when it Avas built or when it was destroyed. With iron we
have extended this limit of stone to spans of 459 feet in rigid girders, as in the
Britannia bridge, and to S21 feet by suspension, as in the Niagara bridge, and
this limit by suspension is likely to be much exceeded in a short time, since a
bridge of 1,224 feet span is in course of construction over the Kentucky river.

Mr. Barlow, an engineer of note in England, and the first authority on the
strength of materials, after visiting this country to see the Niagara bridge, re-
ported it as a reliable bridge, and as likely to endure, if taken care of, as any
bridge of stone, (he, of course, meant the iron part, the cables,) and then offered
to build a bridge of 3,000 feet span of steel wire over the Mersey, at Liverpool.
It is not necessary to say any more to show the great and wonderful value of
iron as the best material for building bridges of large span, say all spans over j
50 feet.

As to the relative merits of different plans much may be said. The solid
plate girder, as used by Robert Stephenson in the Britannia bridge, under the
peculiar circumstances of having to build it in one place, and erect it while
whole in another, became the rage among engineers in England, and to a certain
extent has remained so to this time. Many bridges on this plan have been built,
which are reliable paid have an abundance "of strength, but they have also an
abundance of iron, more than is necessary to obtain the same strength with
other plans of construction. The solid plate girder, or the box girder, or any
other girder of large span, made of plate iron riveted, is behind the scientific
knowledge of bridge-building of the age in which we are living. An admira-
ble and well-written article on the comparative merits of the plate girder as used
in the Victoria bridge, and some of the American iron truss girders, will be found
in the American Railroad Journal of five to eight years since.

The Warren girder, as used in England, appears to be a reliable, good plan of
construction ; it was used in the great Crumlin viaduct ; the tests applied to
which, when finished, were very satisfactory. This plan of bridge, like the plate
girder, is entirely of wrought iron, ignoring the merits of cast iron in bridge-
building. I contend that cast iron is the proper material to use, and is vastly
superior to wrought iron in bridge building, when its duty brings in play its com-
pressive strength, and that wrought iron is the material to use where the duty is
a tensile one. American engineers of note, in designing new plans for bridges,
did not lose sight of the comparative merits of cast and wrought iron when used
in their right places. This is seen in studying the plans of Colonel Long,
Bollman, Fink, and Whipple, all of which plans are worthy of much attention
and consideration. All have posts and top chords of cast iron, which are
always in a state of thrust or compression ; while the suspension rods, lower
chords, (Fink's and Bollman's have no lower chords,) diagonal bracing, &c,
which are always in a state of tension, are of wrought iron. The largest bridge
structure in South America is one of iron, on the plan of Colonel Long, which
was built in New York and erected under my direction in Chili, in 1S5S. It
has eleven spans of thirty-three metres each, and consists of many thousand
parts, all of each kind interchangeable ; it was not erected or put together until
brought to its destination ; it was then erected without any one piece being

found deficient in size or finish. When keyed up it had the exact camber
called for, which it has preserved under the traffic of heavy engines to the pres-
ent day, without any expenses for repairs, watching, or other items, save an
occasional inspection. This should he considered sufficient proof that the plan
is a good one.

The plans of Bollmau and Fink can he seen on the Baltimore and Ohio rail-
road, where they are, I believe, held in high esteem. I consider each of these
plans as a valuable invention and worthy of great attention. I have no doubt
of the practicability of building reliable bridges on either >i the last-named plans
up to and beyond 400 feet clear span.

The plan of Fink appears to be based upon the most scientific principles,
and capable of the clearest and most simple demonstration, as to the duty per-
formed and the distress sustained by each and every part, of any bridge yet
invented.

Every bridge of iron should be constructed of the best material. The cast
iron should be tested (every piece separately) for flaws. The limit of elasticity
of the wrought iron should be not less than 30,000 pounds per square inch : the
dimensions so arranged that the distress resulting from its own weight and the
passage of the heaviest trains should not exceed S.000 pounds per square inch
for cast-iron, and 9,000 per square inch for wrought iron. Every bridge should
have an ultimate strength of at least six times the amount of distress it is daily
subjected to. The system of making iron-steel, semi-steel, and homogeneous
metal, as it is called by Bessemer, and patented by him in. England, will no
doubt revolutionize all large things made of iron, and particularly iron bridges
and rails. Cold-rolling iron, as introduced by Mr. Lauth, of Pittsburg, is also
likely to be introduced with advantage in the wrought iron of bridges ; but in
reducing the amount of material used in a bridge, weight is an element of impor-
tance which must not be lost sight of. The only writer on bridge construction
that has ever, as far as I know, introduced this element in his discussions, was
Mr. lloebling, in treating of the merits and capabilities of his Xiagara bridge —
a work which will make his name imperishable among engineers ; a work which
may rank as one among the only four great engineering structures accomplished
by man since the creation.

WEIGHT AND OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGINES.

This is an important matter in the economy of a railway, to discuss which
fully would fill a volume. In no country in the world has so much ingenuity
and happy invention been applied to locomotives as in the United States.
As railway companies were determined to have poor tracks, it became a ne-
cessity to have not only good engines, but wonderfully good engines and cars,
or abandon the railway system altogether ; for with cars on four wheels and ten
feet between axles, and engines with a wheel base of sixteen to eighteen feet,
as is eommdn in England, with the axles parallel and fixed in a rigid frame, it
would be impossible to work our railways, particularly where mountain work
necessitated steep gradients and sharp curves. The English engine may be
compared to a four-legged stool, which will only stand firm and steady on a
true and level floor. The American engine may be compared to a three-legged
stool, which will stand steady on any floor, all three legs touching and support-
ing. The American engine is a creature of necessity ; and a magnificent crea-
ture it is, when properly handled by skill and intelligence, which is not always
the case ; for railway companies, instead of striving to improve the condition of
locomotive engineers bv riving: increased wages, good houses, schools for their
children, and pensions for their families wheu killed while pursuing their haz-
ardous and trying duties, appear to ignore, the great value of this class of men,
and think it economy to treat them as near as possible like laboring men, for-

getful that their duties are most arduous, and that there is more responsibility
of life and limb intrusted to their cbarge than to any other class of men, to say
nothing of the care and good keeping of a costly and most intricate machine.
If any one doubts the skill required, and the arduous nature of the duties per-
formed by a first-class engineer, let him mount, as I have done, on the foot-board
of an engine with one of these men, when he is about to drive his hundred miles
in two hours and a half on a dark, stormy, cold and cheerless night ; then, while
shivering and holding on to a stanchion, lethim watch that man, who, with one hand
on the throttle and the other on the reversing bar, gives thought to his fire and
water, and while his ear keeps guard over each pulsation of the engine, his eagle
eye peers into darkness to watch for some signal or obstruction as his wonder-work-
ing machine flies through space and appears to laugh at time. I think I see the
doubter turn pale as he stands by that cool and fearless man, and regret that
he ever attempted to solve his doubts by such a perilous ad/enture. Let him
reflect when his ride is over, when his courage returns, and when he feels grate-
ful that he escaped with his life, that that engineer has had his brain taxed, his
constitution exposed, and his nerves strung and unstrung in that way almost
every night in the year, and that when he retires to his bed, it is often in a
state of perfect exhaustion. I beg pardon for this digression, but the engineer
is to me an important point in railway economy.

The weight of an engine should be, in a measure, governed by the number of
Avheels on which it rests. In England, engines have been built of forty tons on
four wheels, and sixty tons on six wheels ; this must be ruinous to any track,
and should not be admitted on any road at any speed. Four tons to a wheel
for fast trains, and five and a half tons to a wheel for slow trains, would, I con-
sider, be a fair limit when the economy of the whole railway becomes a study.
I am satisfied that speed is in most cases more destructive to rails than weight.
Mr. Dodamead, superintendent of the Virginia Central railway, wrote me, in
1861, that the rails wore better on the mountain division of that road, where they
used their heavy engines called " climbers," than they did on the level portions
of their road, where they used lighter engines at higher speed. In 1853 one of
the superintendents of the London and Northwestern railway said to me, in
answer to som° questions, " I do not believe that there has ever been an ex-
press train run over this road that has paid its expenses." I mention these
things to show that high speed is attended with great expense; and as all roads
are worked with trains at different velocities, it is impossible to get at the exact
destructive results of trains at high speed. Dr. Lardner, in his work on " Rail-
way Economy," published in 1850, says in reference to express trains : " I have
no doubt, from long and careful practical investigation into the effects produced
by the action of engines on railways, that the damage sustained directly and in-
directly by railway proprietors in consequence of express trains moving at ex-
traordinary speed, is far greater than any profits derivable from such trains can
cover; and I have no hesitation in saying that, considered in a commercial point
of view, railway proprietors would be fully justified either in laying a much
higher rate of fare upon express trains, or, which would be much more advisable
and more consistent with their own interests, suppressing them altogether." I
will close this matter of engines by recommending all passenger trains to be
worked at a speed not exceeding thirty miles an hour with thirty-ton engines,
on eight wheels, four of which are drivers ; that all goods trains be worked at
a speed not exceeding fourteen miles an hour, with engines of thirty-five to forty
tons, on eight wheels, six drivers and two wheels with " Hudson's improved
Bissell truck;" that all the engines be fitted with steel tyres to ihe driving
wheels, and Gifford's injector as well as pumps; that the materials used and the
workmanship be of the very best; that all engines be built at first-class works,
and a fair price paid, to insure first-class machines

The private reports made to the London and Northwestern railway by Mr.

Edward Woods in 1853, as to the economy of the different classes of engines
on that great railway, contain valuable information, and prove clearly that
the heavy crank engines of the southern division cannot be made to work with
the same economy as the light outside cylinder engines of the northern division.

RAILWAY CARS.

The passenger and freight cars in general use on American railways are in
design admirably fitted for railway service. The cast-iron wheels used in
American cars, when made by experienced founders from good American iron,
are superior to the wheels used in any other country for endurance. It is,
however, common for American companies to demand wheels at a low price.
When this is the case, Scotch pig and poor qualities of American iron are used,
and an inferior wheel delivered.

The great merits of the American wheel are becoming known in Europe.
They are adopted in seven English railways in South America, and, I believe,
on all the English railways in Canada.

The American journal-box was tried by Mr. McConnell on the London and
Northwestern railway in 1S52 on the tender of a locomotive, while a set of
English boxes were tried on another tender. They were both run on express
and gravel trains for a distance of six thousand miles, and the result, as
reported to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers at Birmingham, in October,
1852. was as follows: American boxes, six in a set, cost one and one-half penny
per day for oil, cotton-waste, and leather ; English boxes, six in a set, cost nine
pence per day for axle-grease — showing a saving of seven and one-half pence
per day (equal to fifteen cents) on each set of six boxes. Besides this, there
was a saving in the first cost of boxes, the American set of six weighing one
hundred and seventy-six pounds less than the English. To show how difficult
it is to introduce any improvement in railway matters, and particularly in Eng-
land, I would state that the American box is not introduced on any railway I
know of in England, although this experiment was made on the road of the
largest moneyed railway corporation in the world by an eminent mechanical
engineer, and given to the public through an institution composed of all the first
mechanical and railway men of the kingdom.

It has been acknowledged in England by " The Engineer" — a leading authority

in railway matters — that American engines running, as they say, 4i over what

we know to be a notoriously inferior track to those in England," perform an

average duty of twenty to twenty -five per cent, more than the English engines ;

but they have not in any way attempted to account for this difference. I have

before said that the American engines in design are superior to the English,

particularly on steep gradients, sharp curves, and inferior track; but this

superiority would not be so prominent and glaringly evident were both engines

\ on good, straight tracks, with light gradients. There must be another cause : it

! is in the different systems of cars used. The English use four-wheeled, the

- Americans eight-wheeled cars. The English cars, when loaded, have about

; half their loads overhanging the axles. When in a train, and it is started in

; motion, they feel quickly all the irregularities of the track, and begin to oscillate

! in the direction of their length, using up in this way a large portion of the

I power of the engine. The American car has but little of its load as over-

i hanging weight. The trucks oscillate as they pass irregularities of the track,

I but the load does not, leaving: the engine to utilize its whole power in traction.

It any engineer can give a better reason for the American engines doing more

; duty on an inferior track than the English engine does on a superior track I

; would like to hear it.

The American cars are all they should be when built by first-class builders.
; When improvements are made they will be introduced by the car-builders, and

not by the railway companies. All the public ask or expect of the companies
is that they will keep their cars clean and in repair. This in most instances
the public do not receive, nor will they get it as long as there is but one class
of cars provided, and one fare charged for high and low, rich and poor, saint and
sinner, clean and unclean.

RATIO IN WHICH RAILS AMD ROLLING STOCK DETERIORATE WITH DIFFERENT

TELOC TIES

It is impossible to give any mathematical answer to this question, nor could
there be without having two roads laid at the same time, side and side, with the
same iron, gradients, curves, sleepers, fastenings, ballast, number of stoppages,
&c, and run with equal weight engines at different velocities. The answer
must be a general one, and can be no more than an opinion. My belief is that
the duration in the life of the rails, engines, and cars would be increased over
one hundred per centum by decreasing a speed of forty miles to twenty miles
per hour; and I believe that nearly the same result would be found between
speeds of thirty and fifteen. Again, with the same track, the iron would last
longer with the same velocities by using twenty-ton engines, with corresponding
trains, instead of forty-ton engines and trains to utilize their tractive power.

Having answered all questions, I must now apologize for not having done
what I proposed — give categorical answers instead of the rambling and
digressive nature of this paper, and for having introduced many things ap-
parently foreign to the subject; but, thinking and believing that there may be
an occasional line or idea in it worthy of notice, and that may in some way
directly or indirectly assist in railway reform, 1 respectfully submit it, and
remain, colonel, your obedient servant,

W. W. EVANS.

Lieut. Col. J. H. Simpson,

Corps Engineers.

APPENDIX M.

Union Pacific Railroad Company, Engineer Department,

13 William street, New York, January 29, 1866.

Colonel: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt (some weeks since
at Omaha) of your circular letter of the 18th of December, 1865, accompanied
by a circular from the honorable Secretary of the Interior, in which you invite
my opinion on several points connected with the construction and operation of
railroads, with a view of laying it, with others of the same character, before a
board of "government commissioners, directors, and engineer of Pacific rail-
road," for the purpose of "aiding the government in establishing such a standard
for these roads" (the Union Pacific and its branches) "that, when finished, they
will subserve the purposes for which they are built, and be a credit to the
nation."

A reply to your communication would have been forwarded at an earlier clay
had you not informed me, in person, that the meeting of the board had been
postponed from early in January to early in February.

The position which I have the honor to occupy, of consulting engineer, of by
far the most important of the roads referred to in your letter, might be regarded
as placing me in a position of some embarrassment, and possibly of warping
my judgment in relation to the subject-matter of your letter; but I shall en-
deavor, in what I may say, to be entirely frank, as well as independent of any
interests which I may be supposed to represent. I shall claim your pardon,

however, if from this or any other consideration my discussion of the subject
takes a somewhat wider range than appears to be contemplated in your letter.

The law of Congress, granting government aid to the Union Pacific railroad
and branches, provides that they shall be built as "first-class railroads." It
also provides that the President of the United States shall appoint three com-
missioners, whose duty it shall be to examine the roads and certify to this fact.
It also provides that the President shall appoint five government directors for
the Union Pacific Railroad Company, one of whom shall be placed upon each
of the standing committees of the board. It also provides that the President
shall fix the eastern terminal point, the poiot of crossing the 100th meridian of
longitude, and approve the location between these points. It also fixes the
extreme limit to the grades and curves of the road, the width of gauge, and
character of the iron rails.

With all these safeguards thrown about these roads, for the purpose of pro-
tecting the interests of the government and securing their proper construction,
it would seem almost impossible (unless the government officers fail in the per-
formance of their duty) for the railroad companies to evade a proper discharge
of the responsibilities imposed upon them by Congress ; and it will, in my
opinion, be equally difficult for the board of government commissioners, direc-
tors, and engineer, referred to in your letter, to establish a common and unvary-
ing standard for the construction and equipment of these roads.

The term "first-class" railroads, as generally used in this country, does not,
so far as my experience and observation extend, either depend upon or apply to
any particular "weight or cross-section of rail, plan of chair, spike or other
joint fastenings, dimensions of and distance between ties, width of road-bed at
grade in excavation and embankments, dimensions of side ditches, depth of
ballast, different plans and materials for railroad bridges, weight and other char-
acteristics of engines and rolling stock, or ratio in which rails and rolling stock
deteriorate with different velocities."

You will find that all the foregoing characteristics which are specified in your
letter not only vary materially on the different first-class roads throughout the
country, but upon the same road.

I do not know of a first-class railroad of any considerable length that has not
almost every variety of weight and pattern of rails, chairs, engines, cars, plan
of bridges, width of road-bed and ditches, machine-shops, station-houses, &c,
&c. These are or have been generally governed either by the location of the
road, the grades and curvature, the peculiar views of engineers, the financial
condition of the company, or the nature and extent of the traffic for which the
road was constructed. You may, therefore, select any number of the acknowl-
edged first-class roads throughout the country, and you will find that their
general characteristics will vaiy just in proportion as their peculiar location, the
views of their builders, and the character of their business varies.

You will also find that these roads have generally, if not in all cases, been
constantly improving their condition in regard to structures, outfit, and other
particulars, since their first construction in order to keep pace with their con-
stantly increasing traffic, so that a road five or ten years old presents an entirely
different aspect from what it did when first opened to the public as a first-class
railroad. Hence it may be considered perfectly safe to assume that all- these
things will be regulated by the managers of the road as fast as the interests of
the company or the requirements of the public may demand.

In view of the foregoing facts and considerations I have assumed that the
term first-class railroad, as intended by Congress to be applied to the Union
Pacific railroad and its branches, means a railroad suitable and proper in all
respects for the nature and extent of the traffic which the whole or any portion
of the road may reasonably be expected to do when first opened to the public,
of which the commissioners appointed by the President were to be the judges;

and that everything beyond this was intended to be left to the future control of
the stockholders and managers of the road, whose interests will at all times be at
least twice and, perhaps, three times as large as those represented by the gov-
ernment; and further, that in granting a liberal donation of lands and loans of
government securities to aid in the construction of these roads, the character of
the roads and their outfit was a secondary consideration with Congress when
compared with the great importance to the government and country of their
speedy construction.

I have therefore advised that the line should be so located as to admit of the
present or future adoption of the easiest gradients and curvatures consistent with
reasonable length of line and cost of construction ; that the excavations, em-
bankments, side-ditches and cross-drainage, should be of liberal dimensions:
that the culverts and bridge abutments should be permanently built of stone
whenever it was to be found within reasonable, distance; and when it was not,
to use the most durable .timber attainable, with a view to the substitution of
stone hereafter ; that the truss bridges of long spans should be of the best plans
in use, and composed of durable timber; that the cross-ties should be of liberal
dimensions, of the most durable timber attainable, and laid not less than twenty-
four hundred to the mile ; that the iron rails should be of the most approved
quality and pattern, weighing not less than fifty pounds per lineal yard, and
thoroughly secured to the ties with wrought-iron chairs and spikes ; that the
track should be ballasted with the best material on hand ; that sidings not less
than two thousand feet in length should be inserted, and water-stations con-
structed at intervals of ten, twenty, or thirty miles, as the probable running
arrangements of the road would require ; that permanent and capacious machine-
shops and engine-house should be constructed at the eastern terminus, and at
proper locations along the line, to afford the necessary facilities for repairs, at
intervals of from two to three hundred miles ; that passenger and freight sta-
tions should be constructed of suitable dimensions and at proper points, to ac-
commodate the probable business of the road when opened to the public ; that
the road should be fenced, and cattle-guards put in wherever it passed through
cultivated farms or districts; that the rolling stock should be of uniform pattern,
of the best quality and workmanship attainable, and sufficient in kind and
quantity to accommodate the traffic, and that beyond this no money should be
expended at present, except in pushing the work forward with the greatest
possible energy and despatch.

I have never for a moment doubted that a road of the character above de-
scribed would come clearly within the requirements of the law, entitle the
company to the government aid which Congress intended should be placed at
their disposal, " subserve the purposes for which it was built, and be a credit
to the nation."

Having thus stated the general principles which, in my opinion, should govern
the action of your board, I will now proceed to state, as concisely as possible,
my views on the specific points submitted in your letter.

1. I consider that a rail of good quality of iron, weighing fifty pounds per
linear yard, of the Union Pacific railroad pattern, when properly supported, is
the best and most durable rail that can be used for ordinary traffic on level or
moderate grades. The weight of rail, or underlying support, should be in-
creased proportionately as the weight or draught of the engine is increased, by
reason of steeper grades or other causes.

2. The best joint-fastening now in use I believe to be the fish -joint; next to
that is the wrought-iron chair of the pattern adopted,by the Union Pacific Rail-
road Company.

3. Cross-ties should be eight feet long, and six by (not less than) eight inches
.square, and should be laid not less than twenty-four hundred to the mile.

I desire to say in this place that I am not now, and never have been, in favor

of a cross-tie track. I believe that a continuous bearing of timber (say eight
by twelve inches) is much the safest, as well as cheapest in the end. I have
scarcely taken up a newspaper within the past month that has not recorded a
serious accident and loss of life occasioned by a broken rail. These accidents
could not occur with a continuous bearing of longitudinal timber underneath the
rail ; if the rail should break it could not get out of place. Broken axles and
wheels, as well as most other accidents to tbe running machinery, occur from
the same cause, or from the shock occasioned by passing from a full bearing on
a cross-tie, over the vacant space between the ties. The rail in time becomes
disintegrated and weakened, and finally breaks. I would rather have a forty-
pound rail, laid on a continuous bearing of timber, than a fifty-pound rail laid
on cross-ties two feet apart from centre to centre. The saving in the wear and
tear of rolling stock and rails will be at least ten per cent, per annum.

4. The width of road-bed proper at grade, or bottom of tie, both in excava-
tion and embankments, composed of material that does notAvash or slide, should
not be less, and need not be more, than twelve feet. The dimensions of side-
ditches should be governed by the probable amount of drainage and the width
between bottom slopes of excavations, by the character of material and depth of
cut.

5. I consider the " McGallum patent inflexible arched truss railroad bridge "
to be the best in use. The " Howe truss " is the next best ; either are good
enough for any ordinary purpose. I have never been in favor of iron bridges
for railroads.

6. A locomotive with five-feet drivers, cylinders sixteen by twenty-four
inches, and weighing from twenty-eight to thirty tons, is the best for ordinary
work on ordinary grades. If you wish to transport extraordinary loads on high
grades, you must increase the power and weight or adhesion proportionately.

7. I think that, as a general rule, and with ordinary use, the rails and rolling
stock of a railroad depreciate about fifteen per cent, per annum : and, with ref-
erence to different velocities, that they deteriorate in the ratio of the increase of
speed — that is, the wear and tear is twice as great at a speed of twenty miles
per hour than at ten, and so on to any reasonable limit.

The f >regoing,T believe, covers substantially all the points specified in your
letter. The views upon them are expressed hastily, and without resort to cal-
culations or statistics.

In conclusion, I desire to express my entire confidence in the disinterested-
ness of the motives of yourself and the other officers who are associated with
you on the part of the government in connexion with this great national en-
terprise, in whatever you may do to elevate and establish the standard of the
work. In doing this within reasonable and proper limits, you will always have
my hearty co-operation and support.

I desire also to express the hope that you will nor lose sight of the other great
idea, that all these things are, or should be, subordinate to the vigorous prose-
cution and speedy completion of the road. Whatever you may do to facilitate
this result will be regarded as a great public benefit.

I am, colonel, very respectfully, vour obedient servant,

S. SEYMOUR.

Colonel J. H. Simpson,

U. S. Engineer, ^Vaslington, D. C.

APPENDIX N.

Philadelphia, January 20, 1S66.
Sir : Preferring- to the late a uversation between us in the office of the Pitts-

burg and Fort Wayne Railroad Company, in which you requested me to write you
my views on the economy of substituting the Bessemer cast-steel rail in place
of the iron, 1 start upou the broad ground of the absolute necessity of employ-
ing some better material than the ordinary iron now used. Were it possible to
always obtain iron rails of the quality formerly made, (regarding the endurance
of which we occasionally hear such wonderful accounts,) I question whether
Mr. Bessemer would have ever thought it necessary to roll steel rails.

The difficulty of late with iron seems to have arisen more from an absence of
homogeneity in its fibre than an inherent want of tensile strength ; although in-
stances are not wanting in which both the tensile and transverse strength of
iron rails have been proven to be but little greater than that of cast iron.

The realization of these facts has led to the introduction on most of the rail-
ways of England and the continent of the Bessemer steel rail, and thus far
with the most entirely satisfactory results. If iron rails were only taken up
when u-orn out by the sheer abrasion of their surface, their endurance on the
main line of the track would probably reach to fifty instead of five years,
which may be taken as their average life in the United States. The facts,
however, prove that it. is the lamination and splitting of the rail which are the
potent causes of its destruction, and that soon after these weak points begin to-
show, the rail is crushed out and must be re-rolled. This rapid destruction of
the rail may be traced to several causes, among which are the following :

1st. An inherent defect of the iron itself.

2d. The imperfect condition of the road-bed, and the equally imperfect fasten-
ings by which the rail is kept in place.

3d. The great increase of weight in our locomotives and trains, without a cor-
responding increase of weight in the rails.

4th. The too-often imperfect and rigid springs on which the locomotives are
suspended, which more than any other cause hammers out the rail when in
rapid motion.

This last cause has, perhaps, been the oue least regarded by railway men,
and yet to my mind is one of the most serious of all the evils in the motive
po wer.

Locomotive builders have been more intent on carrying up their weight, than
giving room for a broad, long, and elastic spring of the best metal. No spring
should ever be admitted under an engine ol a less length than between thirty-
six and forty inches, nor of a less breadth than three and a half to four inches,
and the materials used should be only the best cast spring steel, as light as will
carry the load.

With a maximum speed of six to eight miles per hour it would, perhaps, be
of small importance whether any spring be ;ised ; but if it be increased to
eighteen or twenty miles, the pounding on the rails is more than in an arith-
metical progression. In England the question of using iron or steel rails has
been definitely settled, as every leading road appears to have determined to
re-lay with Bessemer steel as rapidly as possible. In the United States only
a few of our leading railway men seem to have had the courage to advocate
the use of steel. Among these few, however, may be named the first rail-
way talent we possess, which openly avows that the only salvation of our rail-
way system will be found in the use of the steel rail.

These advocates of the Bessemer metal have backed up their conviction by
giving out orders varying from 100 to 4,000 tons for early deliveries, and have
expressed their intention to put down the entire line of their track in cast steel
as rapidly as the old rails may require to be replaced.

Such a decision will not appear hasty, if a few moments be taken to estimate
the cost of continually re- rolling and re-laying iron rails.

An experience of several years in the use of steel rails on one of the leading
roads in Great Britain led to the establishment of the rail mills at Crew, where

10,000 tons per annum of Bessemer steel rails are now produced for their own
use on the London and Northwestern road. After using them a little over
three years, it was found that each steel rail had outlasted more than twenty
of iron on one portion of their road at Camdentown. At this spot, where the
strain and destruction of the rail is particularly severe, the iron had to be re-
rolled every two months during a period of three years ; while the steel, at the
end of the same period, had endured the same traffic and was yet good.

If an estimate be made of the total cost, say of one mile, (or 100 tons,) of
such iron road, for three years, (which was less than the lifetime of the steel
rails,) it will be found, if the iron be taken at our value to-day, say $85, and
the re-rolling $35, re-laying $5 per ton, with interest at six per cent., the entire
cost would reach the enormous sum, in three years, of 8S4,150, or $28,050 per
mile each year ; while the steel, at its present full value for small lots, say $165
per ton, would only have cost 819,470 for the three years, or §6,490 each year,
making a total saving of $64,6S0 by the use of steel on one mile of track in
three years.

Some may urge this to be an exceptional case, and that each six months
would be nearer the estimate for re-rolling, even in the worst portion of our lead-
ing roads. If we still give the steel the same proportion of endurance, eighteen
times that of iron, the result would be a total cost of $99,450 per mile for the
iron rails in nine years, while the steel cost only $26,000, making still a balance
of $73,450 in favor of the steel. Should this be carried still further, and the
iron only rolled each twelve months, the result would be a balance in favor of
the steel of $85,770 ; and if the re-rolling only be done once in five years, the
total saving (continuing the same proportion for the steel) would be 8170,000
per mile in its favor. These figures, although hastily gone over, are near
enough for all practical purposes ; and if to them be added the very great
.saving to the locomotives and rolling stock generally, in having a smooth, non-
laminating surface to traverse, in lieu of the battered iron now in general use ;
whilst to this may be added an entire freedom from those very expensive acci-
dents arising from "broken rails," as the tensile strength of the Bessemer steel
is more than double that of the iron ; whilst, at the same time, they will bend
double cold, and you have a grand total which will place the steel rail far be-
yond any competition from iron as at present manufactured.

If I have not already tired out your patience, I may at another time present
some further views with regard to railway matters which may interest you.
I am, sir, verv respectfullv, yours.

PHILIP S. JUSTICE.

Springer Harbaugh, Esq.,

Government Director to P. R. R,, Pittsburg, Pa.

APPENDIX O.

House of Representatives,

Washington, February 2, 1866.

Dear Sir: I received the enclosed letter from TV. P. Shinn, late superin-
tendent on our Pittsburg, Fort Wayne, and Chicago railway, whom you know
to be a very intelligent gentleman, as well as an experienced railroad man. Your
Pacific railroad committee being now in session, I desire to call attention to the
suggestions made by Mr. Shinn as to the character of the rails to be used in the
construction of your great road. It should be made a first-class road at the
start.

Very truly vours,

M. WELKEK.

Col. T. C. Sherman.

4.6

Pittsburg, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railway Co.,

Office of the General Freight Agent, Pittsburg, January 3, 1S66.

Dear Sir : I am not fully informed as to the control of the government in the
matter of details of construction of the Union Pacific railroad ; but I cannot for-
bear to call the attention (through you) of the proper authorities to the fact that
the rails are being laid with " chairs" at the joints, instead of the more modern
" fish bars" or " slice joints," the advantages of which are now so well known and
so generally adopted on lines of railway doing a heavy business, such as the
Union Pacific, railroad must do. The saving in wear of iron at the joints, and
the reduction in wear and tear of machinery in using the splice joint, amounts,
in my opinion, to at least 50 per cent. o:i the cost of the rails. I have no
interest in the joint, direct or otherwise.
Yours, respectfully,

WM. P. SHINN.

Hon. M. Welker, Washington, D. C.

APPENDIX P.

Willards' Hotel, Washington, February 2, 1866.
Sir : Your note of the 1st instant, inviting Colonel Seymour and myself " to
be present at a convention of the government directors, commissioners, and engi-
neer, to meet in the Washington aqueduct building at 12 to-day," (yesterday,)
was handed to me at 2 p. m. yesterday.

This is the first official notice received by the Union Pacific Railroad Com-
pany of the meeting referred to in your letter, and I am, therefore, not advised
of the objects and purposes of the meeting.

I am at present in Washington on very pressing business of the company,
which requires my u hole time and attention, and, being without authority from
the board of directois to represent the company before such a convention as
you refer to, I shall be compelled to decline your invitation.

I have the honor >. o be, colonel, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

THOS. C. DURANT,
Vice-President Union Pacific Railroad Company.
Col. J. H. Simpso v,

Zlnited States Engineer, Washington, D. C.

APPENDIX Q.

[Telegram.]

Chicago, February 2, 1866.
Track with fish-joints can be laid as fast as with chairs. It will cost from
thirtv to forty dollars per mile extra for laying.

H. H. GARDNER.
J. L. Williams, (care Interior Department.)

APPENDIX P.

A copy of circular No. 2 having been sent to Hon. Jesse L. Williams, gov-
ernment director of the Union Pacific railroad, he prepared the following paper
submitted it to the business committee, and subsequently sent it, with the prefa-
tory letter, to be included with the records of the convention:

Fort Wayne, February 19, 1866.

Colonel: In response to your request of the 12th instant, I append a copy
of the paper respecting a standard for the construction of the Pacific railroad,
submitted to a committee of the late convention of the government commis-
sioners, directors, engineer, and others. This paper was not designed as a full
answer to all the points of inquiry embraced in your circular Xo. 2, and is of
less general interest to railroad men than the elaborate replies from distin-
guished engineers read before the convention. Its purpose was, under a reason-
able view of the circumstances, so to apply the requirements of the Pacific
railroad act in its letter and spirit to the condition, topography, and building
materials of that distant and sparsely inhabited region, as to secure the two-
fold object of Congress, to wit: first, a reliable and efficient first-class railroad,
which, on its full completion, shall subserve in the highest degree the great
public interests by reducing both time and cost of transit to a minimum; and
second, the speediest possible opening of the work to the mining districts, both
from the Missouri river and the Pacific seaboard.
Very respectfully,

J. L. WILLIAMS.

Lieut. Col. J. H. Simpson,

Corps of Engineers.

PACIFIC EAILROAD— WHAT SHALL BE ITS STANDARD OF CONSTRUCTION.

This is a great national work, to be built mainly by the nation's means, for
important public and governmental objects. From considerations of public
policy and convenience, the instrumentality of an incorporate company is used in
its construction and working. The munificence of the grants made by Con-
gress, and the great interests which the road is to subserve, no less than the
language of the law, demand the construction of a first-class railroad.

Iu what sense and scope is the term "first-class" used in the law? Very few
railroads in this country, even though the company may have had abundant
means, have met at their first opening, in every particular, the characteristics here
specified. Railroads do not ordinarily spring at once into perfection of track and
equipment. In respect to solidity of road-bed, on which smoothness of track
chiefly depends, completeness and extent of shops, station buildings, and rolling
stock, railroads rather grow into the condition described by the term "first
class."

But while this is true, the plans from the beginning may embrace the idea of a
perfect and complete road to be realized very soon, and every step should be taken
in accordance with such plans. There are certain leading characteristics, both
of location and construction, fixing and governing the future character of the
work, in which even a new road can and should conform literally and strictly to
the specification contained in the law. Some of these I will enumerate :

1. As to grades and alignments. — While the letter of the law makes the
Baltimore and Ohio railroad the standard, this must be considered as a limit to be

reached only in the mountain districts. To introduce grades as high as 116 feet per
mile, or curves with radii as short as 400 feet on other parts of the route, would man-
ifestly outrage the spirit and intent of the law. In the location of each general
division, the question of ruling grades and curvature should be settled upon
principles of true economy and adaptation, based upon careful scientific and prac-
tical investigation, having regard both to cost, construction and future working.
It is safe to decide at this time that on the Platte Valley division extending from
the Missouri river to near the foot of the Black Hill range, some 500 miles, and also
along the Kansas valley, and wherever on any portion of the road or its branches
a valley should be followed or a level plain passed over, no ascent should be
allowed higher than at the rate of 30 feet per mile. As regards the Platte valley,
its ascent is so uniform that 20 feet per mile would probably be a more judicious
limit.

2. As to width of embankments and excavations. — On all parts of the road
or its branches, where a single track is contemplated, embankments should not
be less than 14 feet wide on top, this width being necessary to receive ballast,
whether put on before or after the track is laid. The slopes of earth embank-
ments should generally have one and a half base to one rise.

Excavations in earth, if the cuts are of much length, should be 26 feet; or if
short, 24 feet wide at bottom ; giving in every cut room for side ditches, of such
ample depth and width as to secure that most essential requisite, a well-drained
road-bed. Slopes (except in rock) should have one to one and a half base, to
one rise, depending upon the character of the earth or if steeper, then a greater
width at bottom, so as to remove the same quantity of earth as would be contained
within these slopes, allowing the banks to form their own slopes.

In rock the cuts Avill be 16 feet wide at bottom.

o. Mechanical structures. — Culverts, drains, and bridge abutments should be
built of stone whenever that material of a durable character can be found within
reasonable hauling distance say five to eight miles, depending upon circumstances.
But if stone be too remote, then trestle-work of best timber available may be
used until stone can be delivered by the road. For the bridges, the Howe truss,
or other equally safe and reliable plan, should be adopted.

4. Ballasting. — A railroad cannot be called complete until well ballasted.
This is a branch of the construction, most economically performed when gravel
is used, after the road is opened for construction trains. But it should be com-
menced immediately upon such opening, and continued with diligence, from
time to time, until the track is fully ballasted. Ballast, if of gravel, should be
12 to 24 inches in depth, or, if of broken stone, 12 inches. But in parts of the
Platte and Kansas valleys, and on other like formations, where neither coarse
gravel nor stone is found within reasonable distance, then the best of the sand
or sandy materials furnished by the excavations, or found in the contiguous
river-bed, must suffice for a time.

5. Cross-ties. — Oak, or other equally durable timber, should be used wher-
ever it can be obtained, with any reasonable transportation, from the contiguous
groves, or delivered by water at the starting-points, and carried forward by
construction trains. W here such timber in sufficient amount cannot be obtained
at any reasonable cost, then the best the country affords must be used. But if
cottonwood, or other like timber, is of necessity used, the ties must first be thor-
oughly Burnettized or Kyanized. In all cases the joint tie should, for the better
holding the spikes, be of oak or other hard wood. The number of ties will be
such as to average about two feet apart from centre to centre, or 2,600 per mile.
They should be eight feet long and six inches thick; and if sawed, not less than
eight inches wide ; or if hewn on two sides, six inches face. The joint tie
should be ten inches wide.

6. Rails. — These to be of American iron, as required by the law, of best
quality, and should weigh sixty pounds to the yard ; or, on condition of special

care in the manufacture, to use only the best iron ; then, on account of the
tedious and expensive transportation at the present time from rail mills so dis-
tant, the weight may be reduced to fifty-six pounds per yard. In the mountain
districts, where heavier engines will be used, 60-pound rails should be laid.
As the nearest approximation to a continuous rail within our reach at moderate
cost, instead of the ordinary chair, the " fish-joint," so called, should be used at
the joining of the bars, consisting of two well-fitted pieces of wrought iron,
twenty-two inches long, one on each side, clasping the rails, and secured by four
§-inch bolts. The rail should be spiked to each tie, both inside and outside,
using four spikes to the tie.

7. Sidings. — The length of the side track laid at the opening should be at
least six per cent, of the line opened, to be increased as the number of passing
trains shall demand. Side tracks at all stations should be laid eight feet apart
in the clear between rails.

8. Rolling stock. — Locomotive engines and cars must be provided in liberal
proportion to the traffic and the work of construction, to be promptly increased
from time to time with the opening of the additional sections and the increase
of business.

9. Engine-houses, repair shops, and station buildings. — These must be adapted
to the wants of the rolling stock and the accommodation of the business, having
in view the efficient and satisfactory working of the road. While at the opening
of any division the extent and capacity of the buildings erected may be only
such as to provide liberally for the existing amount of rolling stock and the
business of the road, with such increase thereof as is in near prospect, yet the
plans in every case, both as to the buildings and grounds, should be arranged
for prospective enlargement and extension equal to any future business of the
road, the buildings, so far as erected at first, forming appropriate parts of a com-
pleted and symmetrical whole. Engine-houses and repair shops should in all
cases be of stone or brick, with permanent stone foundations, and slate or metallic
roofing, guarding with all care against fire. For convenience and certainty in
running trains water stations should be provided at convenient points, meeting
the wants of the trains, and generally ten or fifteen miles apart. Grounds for
depots, shops, and station purposes of very liberal extent, adequate to any pos-
sible future want, should in all cases be laid off and secured to the company
on the location of any section while land is of little value.

It will be seen that the importance of rapid progress, reaching the mining
regions at the earliest day practicable, has been fully recognized in shaping
these suggestions. No work not essential as a basis for an efficient and reliable
railroad is required, but, on the contrary, there is on some points, from the ne-
cessities of the case, an abatement of the strictness observed in specifications
for railroad construction on lines less remote from the sources of labor and
materials.

But while guarding against delay on the one hand, the public interests
demand on the other an efficient and reliable road, with the highest perfection
of track reasonably attainable on a new line, and giving assurance, from judi-
cious location and plans, of a speedy advance in its condition, and the efficiency
of its working to the standard of a first-class road, so that the mail and military
service of the government and the commerce of the nation shall meet with the
least possible hindrance.

The argument for the rapid progress of the work, so legitimate in its place,
should not be perverted into an excuse for imperfect construction, nor a justifi-
cation of needless high grades, which, upon principles of sound economy, should
have been cut down or avoided in the location.

It is sometimes alleged that the railroad company which becomes the trans-
porter is alone affected by the extra cost resulting from high grades and imper-
4 s

feet construction. This is a mistaken view. The commerce of the country must
finally pay every burden, in the shape of compensatory charges upon traffic, in
order to make the work financially sustaining.

J. L. WILLIAMS.
Fort Wayne, Indiana, January 20, 1866.

APPENDIX S.

Weight and dimensions of rails recommended by different engineers, and of
rails now used on Pacific railroad and branches, Sfc.

Names of engineers and of railroads.

c £
C. 3

a *>

Dimensions, in inches.

Joints.

H. Haupt

J. B. Jervia

G. L. Keid

A. "Welch

B. H. Latrobe

ft. A. Nicolls

W. W. Evans

S. Seymour

Union Pacific railroad

Do do

Union Pacific E. D. railroad.
Central Pacific railroad

11-16

9-16

11-16

Fish

.Sandwich

Fish

Common chair

CHIEF ^ENGINEER

PRELIMINARY SURYEY, COST OF CONSTRUCTION, AND
ESTIMATED REVENUE,

OF CALIFOENIA.

ACROSS THE

SIERRA 3SrE"V^^IDA. ZMZOTTZN" TRUSTS,

FROM

SACRAMENTO TO THE EASTERN BOUNDARY OF CALIFORNIA.
October 22, VWZ

, ^ J "

SACRAMENTO :

H. S. CROCKER & CO.'S PRINT, 107 J STREET.

1862.

OFFICERS

OP THE

CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD

COMPANY OF CALIFORNIA.

President,

LELAND STANFORD, Sacramento.

Vice President,

C. P. HUNTINGTON, Sacramento.

Treasurer,

MARK HOPKINS, Sacramento.

Chief Engineer,

THEO. D. JUDAH, Sacramento.

DIRECTORS.

LELAND STANFOBD of Sacramento.

CHAELES CEOCKEE of Sacramento.

JAMES BAILEY of Sacramento.

THEODOBE D. JUDAH of Sacramento.

L. A. BOOTH or Sacramento.

C. P. HUNTINGTON of Sacramento.

MAEK HOPKINS of Sacramento.

D. W. STBONG of Dutch Flat.

CHAELES MAESH of Nevada.

REPORT.

ENGINEER'S OFFICE, )

Central Pacific E. E. of California, j"

Sacramento, October 1, 1861.

To the President and Directors of the Central Pacific Eail-
road Company of California:

C4entlemen — Agreeably to your instructions, I bave completed
the preliminary survey of a Eailroad across the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, from the city of Sacramento to a point on the Truckee
Eiver, at the eastern base of the mountains ; the results of which
confirm the facts established by the barometrical reconnoisance
made last fall.

A preliminary examination was made, and barometrical observa-
tions taken last fall upon three routes— one through El Dorado
county via Georgetown, another via the present route (Illinoistown
and Dutch Flat), and the third via Xevada and Henness Pass.

These observations demonstrated the existence of a route from
Sacramento across the Sierra Nevadas, by which the summit could
be attained with grades of 105 feet per mile ; accordingly field par-
ties were organized early in the spring, and a thorough Eailroad
Survey made, the results of which are embodied in the following
Report, developing a line with lighter grades, less distance, and
encountering fewer obstacles than found upon any other route or

line hitherto examined across the Sierra Nevada Mountains ; and
proving, by actual survey that the difficulties and formidable fea-»
tures of this range can be successfully overcome for Eailroad pur-
poses.

Among the objectionable features which render the Sierra Ne-
vada Mountains formidable for Eailroad operations, are found —

First. The great elevation to be overcome in crossing its-
summit, AND THE WANT OF UNIFORMITY IN ITS WESTERN SLOPES.

It will be observed that in crossing a summit of 7,000 feet in
hight, an average grade of 100 feet per mile, can only be attained,
with a distance or base of 70 miles. Should any irregularity of
surface occur in this distance, the grade would be correspondingly
lessened or increased, in conformity with such irregularity of sur-
face.

When it is considered that the average length of the western
slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, from summit to base, is only
about 70 miles, and the general hight of its lowest passes about
7,000 feet, the difficulty of locating a Eailroad line with 100-feet
grades is correspondingly increased, as it becomes absolutely neces-
sary to find ground upon which to preserve a general uniformity of
grade.

In the present instance, the elevation of summit 7,000 feet above
Sacramento, is reached by a maximum grade of 105 feet per mile ;
showing a remarkable regularit}^ of surface, without which the as-
cent could not have been accomplished with this grade.

Secondly. From the impracticability op river crossings in
the mountains.

To those unacquainted with the mountain topography of the
western slope of the Sierra Nevadas, and accustomed to the lesser
elevations and gentler slojDes of the Atlantic States, it would be
difficult to convey an adequate idea of the extensive proportions of
the irregularities of surface which attach to these mountains.

The general course of the Sierras is north-westerly, and parallel
to the line of the Pacific coast.

This western slope being at right angles, extends, therefore, in a
southwesterly direction, which is the general course or direction of
the rivers and streams upon its western slopes.

Between a point opposite the city of Sacramento (about latitude

882) and Shasta (about 41 degrees), this western slope is intersected
by numerous rivers, having their sources near the summit of the
Sierras. They are as follows : The South Fork of American,
Middle Fork and North Fork, Bear Eiver, Deer Creek, South Fork
of Yuba, Middle Fork, North Fork, the South, Middle and North
Forks of Feather Eiver.

These rivers run through gorges or canons, in many places from
1,000 to 2,000 feet in depth, with side slopes varying from perpen-
dicular to an angle of forty-five degrees.

The ridges formed by these rivers are sharp, well defined, and in
many places so narrow on top, as to leave barely room for a wagon
road to be made without excavating surface of rid«;e.

The branches, also, of many of these rivers have worn out
gorges as deep as those of the rivers, and present physical barriers
to a line of communication either crossing them, or extending in a
northerly and southerly direction.

These rivers are generally made the dividing lines between
mountain counties, which are of oblong shape, long and narrow;
the counties of El Dorado, Placer and Nevada, extending from
base to summit of Sierra. The thoroughfares of travel extend
into these counties along these ridges ; the focus of travel for the
large counties of El Dorada, Placer, Nevada and Sierra, being Sac-
ramento (a portion of this travel, however, concentrating at Ma*
rysville).

No wagon road exists across the Middle Fork of the American.
The inhabitants of El Dorado county, in order to reach the divide
between Middle and North Fork of the American, by wagon, are
obliged to proceed down to within eight or ten miles of the Sacra-
mento valley, in order to obtain a crossing.

The towns of Forest Hill, Yankee Jim's, Todd's Yalley,- Michigan
Bluffs, Bird's Flat, Sarahsville, etc., lying in the divide between the
North and Middle Forks of the American, are reached by crossing
the North Fork, about four miles above Auburn, at which point the
road is excavated on the face of a steep side-hill above the river
canon, which is about 1,000 feet high, closely following its bends and
sinuosities; the hill upon each side being about four miles in length,
or a total of eight miles in length ; the grade for wagon road vary-
ing from 250 to 300 feet per mile.

Iowa Hill and Wisconsin Hill, although upon this same divide,

are separated from the above mentioned towns by two or three
canons, or branches of the North Pork, running nearly parallel.

One of these canons is deeper and more precijDitous than the
crossing of North Fork, above Auburn ; the descent into the canon
being about one thousand five hundred perpendicular feet. A wag-
on road wide enough for a single team, with occasional turning-out
places, has been built across, but a distance of ten miles of road
is rendered necessary in order to reach across a direct line of about
three miles, the grades being between three hundred and four hun-
dred feet per mile.

From Iowa Hill to Illinoistown and Nevada, the canons of Bear
River, of Steep Hollow, Greenhorn, Wolf Creek, and Deer Creek
intervene.

Above Nevada, the South, Middle, and Main Yuba also intervene.

The present traveled stage road from Nevada to Eureka, etc.,
crosses South Tuba about eight miles from Nevada, the road de-
scending in about two miles one thousand feet, and in the next five
miles ascending two thousand feet, to the top of ridge.

Thus it will be seen that in order to reach the summit of Sierra
Nevada, a Railroad line must avoid the crossings of any of the
canons ; for were it even practicable to follow down into them with
a grade of one hundred feet per mile, it would still be necessary to
retrace the line upon the opposite side, which would involve (in a
canon of, say, one thousand feet in depth) the additional length and
cost of twenty miles of line of maximum grade, with the crossings-
of side ravines and tributaries.

The present line pursues its course along an unbroken ridge from
base to summ't of Sierras, the only river crossing in the mountains

being Little Bear River (a tributaiy of Main B?ir River, about
three miles above Dutch Flat), which is crossed at an elevation of
fifty feet, and will require only about fifty feet span of bridge.

Thirdly. In its entirely avoiding the second summit oe the
Sierra Nevada Mountains.

A cross section of the main range of Sierra Nevada presents a
profile showing two summits, with a range of elevated table-land
lying between ; thus, upon the profile of Lieutenant Beckwith's
survey across the Sierra Nevada via Madelin Pass, are shown two
distinct summits, thirty-five miles apart, with a range of elevated
table-land between them.

The present Placerville wagon road to Washoe also crosses these
two summits; passing the first range via Johnson's Pass, it de-
scends into Bigler Lake Yalley, and ascending again, crosses the
second summit via Daggett's Pass, into Carson Yalley.

Lake Bigler lies in this valley between the two summits — is
about 35 miles long, and from 12 to 15 miles in width ■ is entirely
surrounded by mountains and lofty peaks, excepting at one point
on its western shore, where the Truckee Biver forms its outlet.

Running at first north-westerly about eight miles, then norther-
ly about ten, thence north-easterly about twelve miles, the Truckee
passes down between these two summits with a nearly uniform
fall of about thirty-five feet per mile ; thence sweeping round to
the eastward, it passes through the second range or summit, at a
depression where it seems to be entirely worn away down to the
level of the river, thence pursuing its way through an extensive
plain known as the Truckee Meadows ; thence through the Washoe
Mountains to the Big Bend ; thence northerly about twenty miles,
finds its way into Pyramid Lake.

At the Donner L ike P iss. where our line crosses the first sum.
mit of Sierra Nevada, the altitude of line is about 1.200 feet above
the Truckee Biver. Donner Lake lies immediately beneath, at a
depth of 1,000 feet.

Two long side ranges or spurs inclose the lake and its valley,
declining in hight gradually to the Truckee Biver, about eight
miles below.

Our line is carried down along the side-hill of the spur or range
immediately above the lake, and upon its south side to the Truckee
Biver, which point it reaches in a distance of eleven and a half
miles of line, with an uniformly descending grade of 105 feet per
mile from the summit.

The Truckee thus reached, all further difficulty of location ceases,
as it pierces its way through all obstructions with an uniform de-
scent not exceeding forty feet per mile, to the Humboldt Desert,
which forms the sink of the Humboldt and Carson Bivers.

Thus, the second summit of Sierra Xevada and the crossing of
the Washoe Mountains are entirely avoided; and from the western
base to the summit of Sierra Nevada, the grade is uniformly as-
cending or level, there being no descending grade going eastward ;
while from the summit to Big Bend of Truckee or Humboldt Des-
ert, a uniform grade is likewise maintained.

2HE PROMINENT FEATURES OF THIS LINE MAT BE BRIEFLY ENUME-
RATED AS FOLLOWS :

1st. It crosses the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and reaches the
Truckee River, in 123, and State line in 145 miles from
Sacramento.
2d. Big Bend of Truckee, or Humholdt Desert, is reached in 178

miles.
3di It crosses the State at nearly its narrowest width.
1th. It pursues nearly a direct course from Sacramento to the Big

Bend of Truckee.
5th. It forms a local road for the counties of Sacramento, Placer

and Nevada.
6th. It commands and will perform the entire business of Nevada

Territory, Washoe, and the Silver mineral region.
Tth. It will also command the business of the newly discovered
Humboldt mineral district, Pyramid Lake, Esmeralda, and
Mono mineral districts.
8th. It crosses the Truckee Meadows at the head of Steamboat
Valley, which, with "Washoe Valley and Eagle Valley, con-
nects with Carson Valley, enabling a branch road, with
light grades, to be built to any point on Carson River.
9th. It reaches eastern base of Sierra Nevada in 11 § miles from
Summit.

10th. It follows the valley of Truckee River, without obstacle, to
Big Bend, or Humboldt Desert.

11th. It entirely avoids the second summit of Sierra Nevada.

12th. Its maximum grades are 105 feet per mile, or less than those
of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroads.

13th. The grades clown the Truckee will not exceed 40 feet per
mile.

14th. The elevation of line is maintained, continuously to the sum-
mit—there being no down grade running easterly to Sum-
mit.

15th. An uniformly descending grade is maintained from the sum-
mit easterly to the Truckee, or eastern base.

16th. Encounters no elevated plateau of table-land at Summit.

17th. Running to and from summit with maximum grades, cannot
have an extensive snow-line.

18th. Runs through extensive forests of Pitch and Sugar Pine,
Fir, Cedar, and Tamarac, which latter two sjDecies of tim-
ber are abundant, and will furnish excellent cross-ties.

19th. Crosses no deep river canons or gorges.

20th. Its longest tunnel will not exceed 1,350 feet in length, and
no shafting will be required.

21st. Shortest radius of curvature, 573 feet.

22d. Navigable waters of the Sacramento River at all seasons of
the year its western terminus; Washoe and the Great
Basin its eastern terminus.

23d. At Big Bend of Truckee, the line is in position to proceed
via the Humboldt to Salt Lake, or follow the Simpson
route to some point.

24th. Saving in distance over route via Maclelin Pass and head-
waters of Sacramento, as surveyed by Lieut. Beckwith,
from Lasseur's Meadows, or Humboldt crossing, 184 miles.

25th. Saving in cost of Pacific Eailroad line, taking Lieut. Beck-
with's estimate from Lasseur's Meadows, or Humboldt
crossing, as compared with cost of present proposed line,
in thirteen and one half millions of dollars.

26tln Seduces the time of passenger transit to and from "Washoe
to 8J hours. Passengers leaving Yirginia station at 5
A. m., will reach San Francisco the same evening.

27th. Saving in cost of transportation of freight to citizens of
"Washoe or Nevada Territory, one million of dollars per
year.

28th. Affords a market for low-class silver ores (now thrown
aside), for shipment to Europe, from over 3,000 mining
claims.

29th. Is advantageously located for an extension to Oregon.

30th. Completes first western link of Pacific Eailroad, overcoming
its greatest difficulties.

GENEEAL EEMAEKS CONCEENING LOCATION AND DE*
SCEIPTION OP EIDGE OE DIVIDE.

This divide is the strip of land lying between the American
Eiver and its North Pork (on the south), and Bear Eiver and the
South Yuba (on the north).

The American Eiver unites with the Sacramento Eiver at the
city of Sacramento ; Bear Eiver unites with Feather Eiver (a trib-
utary of the Sacramento) about 30 miles north of the city of Sac-
ramento.

The direction of divide is north-easterly and south-westerly. Its
width opposite Sacramento is about 30 miles.

The foot-hills of Sierra Nevada begin at Polsom, on the Ameri-
can, and at Johnson's Eanch on Bear Eiver; the line of foot-hills
running through or near Lincoln (about 15 miles northerly, from
Polsom, and 10 miles, southerly, from Johnson's Eanch), forming a
piece of land in Sacramento Yalley, between the foot-hills and Sac-

ramento River, of about 30 miles in length and 20 in width. The
ravine of Bear River, from Johnson's Ranch to English Bridge (a
distance of about -15 miles), pursues nearly an easterly course,
while the course of the ravine of American River, from Folsom, is
nearly north, to a point within about 8 miles (south-easterly), from
English Bridge. Here the American River branches, and the ra-
vine of its north fork, as well as that of Bear River, pursue a
north-easterly course, but gradually approach each other to a point
about four miles above Illinoistown, called Long Ravine, where the
two rivers are less than three miles apart.

At this point occurs the greatest depression on the ridge, and the
greatest difficulties in location were found.

From Long Ravine, the ravines of these rivers diverge some-
what, but are scarcely further than six miles apart at any point — ■
the ravine of North Fork and its tributaries and branches continu-
ing up to the summit.

Numerous branches and ravines extend northerly from the North
Fork, rendering a location on that side extremely difficult, if in-
deed practicable, our line at Long Ravine being about 1,200 feet
above the bed of North Fork. The ravine of Bear River extends
up about fourteen miles above Dutch Flat, widening out near the
source of Bear River into a beautiful valley, called Bear Yalley,
about two miles long and one mile wide. Diminished in size to a
small creek, Bear River passes through this valley, and a mile
above, is lost among the benches to the right. The ridge between
Bear Valley and North Fork of American is about 800 feet high.

Here occurs a singular freak of nature. The South Yuba, aug-
mented by numerous large branches along its course, is seen emerg-
ing from impassable rocky canons, and sweeping down through the
head of Bear Yalley, it turns suddenly to the north and pierces the
rido-e or divide lying north of Bear Yalley, forcing its way out to
the northward, between rocky walls, surmounted by peaks from
2,000 to the 3,000 feet high.

There is little doubt, that at some former period, the waters of
South Yuba flowed through Bear Yalley, and down the ravine of
Bear River ; and, indeed, it would be no difficult matter, to turn
the whole volume of South Yuba into Bear River at the present
time.

The South Yuba Canal Company, who supply the Nevada divide
with water for mining purposes, take their water from the South

Yuba,- at the head of Bear Valley, bringing it down through Bear
Valley by the side of Bear River, with a grade of about ten feet
per mile, being, at points, as near as 200 feet to Bear Biver, and not
over fifteen or twenty feet above it. Thus, it will be seen, that the
canon of Bear Biver becomes, and is the same as that of the South
Yuba, which latter river now takes its place, the divide or ridge
being now bounded by North Fork of American on the south, and
South Yuba on the north.

The ravine or valley of South Yuba continues on to the sum-
mit of Sierra Nevada, and in Summit Valley, within two miles of
Summit, the river is a larger stream than is Bear Biver in Bear
Valley.

A barometrical examination of this route indicated that the top
of ridge or divide could be reached at Clipper Gap, near the head
of Dry Creek, 48 \ miles from Sacramento. From this point to Res-
ervoir Gap (about 1J miles above Dutch Flat, and 25 miles from
Clipper Cap), it was found that the line must be carried on the
top of ridge.

The line of top or crest of ridge being far from uniform, of
course the lowest points or gaps in ridge become commanding
points, and it was found necessary to carry the line from gap to
gap, passing around the intervening hills, upon their side slopes.

It was also found, upon reaching New England Cap (near the
New England Mills, about six miles from Clipper Cap), that to
LongBavine, a distance of eight miles, the ridge was nearly level,
the elevation of a grade at Long Ravine being only about 100 feet
higher than at New England Cap.

Also that the ridge rose rapidly from Long Bavine, eastward to
the next gap (called Secret Bavine Cap).

It was also found that from Reservoir Cap (1 \ miles above Dutch
Flat) the ridge rose too rapidly for one maximum grade, and that
for the next 20 miles, to the bottom or valley of Yuba, the line
must be carried on the main slope of Bear and Yuba Rivers. It
was thought, however, that the line could be carried up Canon
Creek (a tributary of North Fork, with tolerably smooth side
slopes), to Dutchman's Gap, about eight miles above, and there
cutting through the gaps, brought out on to Bear Biver side-hill.

Subsequent examination proved this to be impracticable. Canon
Creek rising too rapidly for our grades, we were therefore com-
pelled to carry the line immediately on to Bear River side-hill, and

were fortunate enough to be able to avail ourselves of the side-hill
of Little Bear Eiver for that purpose.

Being on the top of ridge at Beservoir Gap, we were enabled to
cross Little Bear Biver near its head, and to use its side-hill for an
approach to Main Bear Biver.

The barometrical elevations also indicated that the Yuba could
be reached about twenty miles above Dutch Plat, at the head of its
canons, and the line carried along up its smooth, uniform bottoms
for some distance ; then, by taking to its south side-hill, Summit
Valley and summit reached with maximum grades.

The South Yuba, from this point (twenty miles above Dutch
Flat), called Yuba Bottom, extends to the summit, a distance of
sixteen miles, most of the way through a valley, in some places 500
or 600 feet wide. The old Truckee emigrant trail follows down
through the valley a portion of this distance, generally over a
smooth natural road.

"Were the fall of this river evenly distributed, it would afford a
uniform grade of a little less than 100 feet per mile to t\\e summit,

Rising, however, from Yuba Bottom (say half a mile at a grade
of fifty feet per mile), the river canons for half a mile at a steeper
grade ; thence for four miles its grade is about sixty feet per mile ;
it then canons, rising about 250 feet in a mile, at a point called
Slippery Bock Canon.

The river then rises gently for about three miles, and again rap-
idly for three miles, to Summit valley.

Through Summit Yalley (a distance of two and a half miles) its
grade is scarcely twenty-five feet per mile, then rises rapidly again
to the summit.

Inasmuch as the indications of altitude of the aneroid barometer
proved lower than those of the true level, after continuing our line
for six miles along the Yuba bottom, we were obliged to retrace
our steps and commence again near Yuba Bottom, running up on
south side-hill of Yuba, with maximum grade, into Summit Yalley,
in order to attain a sufficient elevation to reach the summit.

Summit Yalley is a beautiful valley, near the source of the Yuba,
about two and a half miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide,
yielding excellent pasturage for cattle, hundreds of which are
driven there each summer.

From the summit looking easterly, you appear standing upon a
nearly perpendicular rocky wall, of 1,000 feet in hight.

Immediately below is seen a valley, from one to two miles wide,
extending up from the Truckee Eiver, to nearly beneath your feet.
Donner Lake, (about three and a half miles* long, by one mile in
width) occupies the upper portion of this valley, and its outlet is
seen pursuing its course down to a junction with the Truckee. Two
long ranges or spurs are seen, on either side, parallel with and
inclosing the lake, reaching from the summit to Truckee River.
Immediately beyond the river is seen the second summit of Sierra
jSTevada, while still further in the distance the "Washoe Mountains
are plainly visible.

Passing the summit, our line is carried down upon the side-hill
of the range, on the south side of Donner Lake, descending with
the maximum grade for about eleven miles.

The distance, in a direct line, from Summit to Truckee Eiver,
does not exceed eight miles : but we fortunately encountered two
long ravines, with smooth side-slopes, which, with the sinuosities
of side-hill, gave about three additional miles of distance, enabling
us to reach the Truckee with maximum descending grades.

PARTICULAR DESCRIPTION OF LINE.

Commencing at the city of Sacramento, the line will cross the
American Eiver about half a mile above Lisle's Bridge ; thence pur-
suing a north-easterly course, for twenty-five miles, across the Sac-
ramento Valley, it reaches the town of Lincoln, or intersection
with the California Central Eailroad, which point is at an elevation
of 140 feet above the top of the levee at Sacramento.

From Lincoln the line follows up an indentation or bay, in the
foot-hills, with grades not exceeding 50 feet per mile (passing half
a mile north of Virginia), to Barmore's, thirty-one miles from Sac-
ramento (elevation, 340 feet above Sacramento), from which point
grades of 84 feet per mile are first used.

Continuing on up the southerly bank of Doty's Eavine (passing
about one mile north of Cold Hill), the line crosses Doty's Eavine,
running down the north side of same for about one-quarter of a
mile with ascending grades ; thence, turning to the right, it crosses
the traveled road, near Dutch Colonel's Blouse, and passes up the
upper portion of what is known as Shipley Eavine.

Thence crossing north-easterly corner of the old Boyen Eaneh,

it follows northerly (near the line of what is known as Sailor's Ba-
vine Ditch), at the base of the foot-hills, to Sailor's Eavine.

Running up Sailor's Eavine, about one-third of a mile, the line
crosses the same, and, turning to the left, it passes about 300 feet
east of Moore's House ; continuing on, up a branch of Sailor's Ea-
vine, to a point called Bar Summit, having attained an elevation of
660' feet above Sacramento.

Thence winding about between the heads of small ravines, it
crosses near the head of Taylor's and Sedergest Eavines, and pass-
ing about two-thirds of a mile north of Taylor's House, reaches
the side-hill of Dry Creek.

Passing up the south-side-hill of Dry Creek, the line follows up
two tributary ravines a short distance, to a favorable crossing, and
in a short distance further strikes another tributary, called Dead-
man's Eavine.

This ravine, presenting a smooth side-hill, the line continues up
the same about half a mile, to a favorable point, where it crosses,
at a hight of about 45 feet.

Pursuing its course down the east side-hill of Deadman's Eavine,
it strikes again the main side-hill of Dry Creek, following the same
to the point where it breaks from its smooth, uniform valley, into
rocky canons ; thence up Dry Creek about two and a half miles, to
the Auburn and Nevada Stage Eoad.

Prom the Nevada Stage Eoad to Clipper G-aj) (a distance of six
miles), the line follows up the valley of Dry Creek, with grades
varying from 50 feet to 105 feet per mile. (At one point on the
profile, a grade of 116 feet per mile will be observed. This is the
grade upon the line, as run ; but a slight alteration of line will re-
duce it to 105 feet.

Prom point where Dry Creek canons to Clipper Gap, the line
passes up and near to Oert's House, Page's, Eedwines, passing un-
der the flume of Bear Eiver Ditch, and crossing Wyman's Turnpike
and Auburn and Nevada Stage Eoad at Hawes' Store.

Thence passing over lands and near the dwellings of Wells, Gil-
bert, Cook, Kingsley, Cogswell, Watson, Buckley, and Neil, it
reaches Gasorway's, or Golden Gate Hotel (passing about 25 feet
in front of Gasorway's house).

Here the stage road forks, one branch following up a side ravine
jbo the left, over Tunnel Hill, and via Empire Mills to Ulinoistown,

while our lino continues to the right, up Dry Creek, about a mile
further, passing about 200 feet in front of Predniore's house.

Here, instead of following Dry Creek further (it rising too
rapidly for. our grades), we cross a gap to the right, called Clipper
Cap, and run up the north side-hill of Clipper Eavine, (a tributary
of North Fork of American), to Wild Cat Summit, crossing several
short, steep side ravines.

Passing through Wild Cat Summit (about one-quarter of a mile
south of Widow Iiawes' house), we pass around Hawes' Hill, and
curving to the left, cross the main road, and pass up a smooth ra-
vine to the top of the ridge, at a point called Applegate Summit.

A short distance further on, the line passes through Evergreen
Gap, crossing the divide again at Baney's Cap, from which point it-
curves round on side-hill (on North Fork side) to Star House Cap,
near the Star House.

Here the line crosses Star House Gap (and the traveled road)
about 50 feet high, passing up very nearly on top of divide, to the
head of Applegate Eavine, which runs into Bear Eiver, this point
being called New England Gap.

From New England Gap the line passes out upon north side-hill
of North Fork.

Crossing the traveled or Stage Eoad, it runs along above the
same, and about 500 feet above New England Mills, through peach
orchard of Murphy; through Manzanita and Chaparral Gaps, and
over Sugar Loaf Summit to Lower Illinoistown Gap, at the point
where upper stage road crosses the gap (about one and a quarter
miles below Illinoistown.)

Crossing this gap, about 30 feet high, the line continues on about
half a mile further, over a broken country, to a point called Bear
Eiver Gap, where it turns abruptly to the left, with maximum
curve, and crosses the ridge with a tunnel of 500 feet in length,
emerging on the south side-hill of Bear Eiver, along which it pur-
sues its course to Storm's Gap and Long Eavine Gap, leaving Illi-
noistown about one mile to the right.

Here was found the greatest difficulty in location; Long Eavine
Gap being an unusually low depression, the ridge beyond rising
quite rapidly to attain its average elevation.

Here the line crosses gap, about 70 feet high, and curving to
the right, follows the side-hill of Eice's Eavine (leading to North
Fork) for about one mile, encountering a succession of short, steep,
9

abrupt side ravines, "to Cape Horn, which is a bold, rocky bluff,
nearly perpendicular, and 1,200 feet high, above the North Fork of
American.

Passing round the face of this bluff, about 200 feet below the
table above, we strike the side-hill of Robber's Ravine, which runs
parallel to Rice's Ravine, and continues up along the side-hill of
same for about one and a half miles, crossing Oak Summit, and
passing about three-quarters south of Madden's Toll House, through
Trail Summit.

From this point the line follows along the face of side-hill above
North Fork, striking Secret Ravine, along which it runs for about
one mile, when, turning to the left, it passes up a tributary side
ravine to its head, the line striking a point about two hundred feet
south of stage road, one mile south of Secret-town.

Running thence, along side of road nearly a mile, it crosses the
same, and passing between Everhart's house and barn, at Secret-
town, it reaches the head of Secret ravine, or Secret-town Gap,
crossing it with trestling, about 50 feet in hight. ^

Turning to the left, the line now passes north of Cold Spring
Mountain (on Bear River side), and for two miles encounters a suc-
cession of steep side ravines, where some of the heaviest work on
the line will be found. Two tunnels will be necessary on this piece
of line, each about 600 feet in length.

Leaving the side-hill again, the line strikes a long and nearly
level bench, about two miles in length, extending up nearly to
Dutch Flat.

This bench is the well known gravel ridge which extends along
the slopes of the Sierras at about this elevation, and on which are
situated the mines worked by the hydraulic mining process.

Extending up this ridge to within about one mile of Dutch Flat,
the line again takes to side-hill to left, running near to Strong's
Cabin, Brickell's Steam Saw Mill, Dutch Flat Steam Saw Mill, to
the Dutch Flat "Water Company's large reservoir (about one and a
half miles above Dutch Flat).

The town of Dutch Flat lies on Bear River side-hill, about half
way down to Bear River, the line passing about half a mile in the
rear, and about 300 feet higher than the town.

At this last named reservoir, which is upon the top of ridge
(called Reservoir Gap), we leave the crest of ridge for the last time,

it rising too rapidly to be available for a railroad line at our maxi-
mum grades.

Turning to the left, the line now runs at nearly a level grade,
about one and a half miles further to Little Bear River, which
stream it crosses just above the Saw Mill, near "Widow Homer's
Ranch.

Pursuing its course down the north side-hill of Little Bear River,
it departs at Ellmore Hill, passing round the same, and enters upon
the side-hill of Bear River.

The river gorge at this point is about 1,500 feet deep — our line
being about 500 feet below the top of ridge, and from 1,000 to
1,200 feet above the river. Its side-hill is steep, rocky, and marked
by many abrupt indentations and corresponding salient points.

The line was carried round most of these points; but upon a
final location, it will probably be found advisable to run through
the sharp points with short tunnels — the longest of which will be
1,350 feet — none of them, however, requiring shafting.

The line passes up this side-hill of Bear River (the grade line
being nearly parallel with the crest or top of the ridge, and from
500 to 700 feet below the same), crossing through Zerr's Ranch
(about 600 feet north of his buildings), striking the lower end of
Bear Valley, about 200 feet high, on its south side-hill.

Continuing on for two miles, it leaves the head of Bear Yalley,
at an elevatien of about 350 feet on side-hill above the same, cross-
ing the head of Bear River (which is here but a small creek), fol-
lowing it up to its source, which is in a marshy lake, about one and
a half miles above Bear Yalley.

It will be observed on the profile, that from Zerr's Ranch to head
of Bear River a grade line is indicated, running about 100 feet
higher on the side-hill.

In locating the line as run, the intention was to cross Bear River,
and continue on the side-hill of the main gorge to Yuba River
(near head of South Yuba Water Company's Canal), keeping up on
main side-hill of South Yuba to Yuba Bottom; but upon examina-
tion, this proved to be impracticable, the Yuba above Bear Yalley
running in deep rocky canons, 'with perpendicular rocky walls of
granite, too rugged in their character to admit of the location of a
line over them.

It therefore became necessary to carry the line on to a bench
above and south of the Yuba River, and nearly at the base of main

Ridge — a line from Zerr's Ranch to this point being practicable at
our maximum grade, the only change necessary being to make the
location a little higher on side-hill.

Our present line passes about 100 feet to the left of Jew Davids'
Cabin. On the location as changed, it will pass a short distance in
the rear of same.

Continuing on, the line pursues the general course of Yuba
River, about six miles further, to the point where old Truckee emi-
grant trail leaves Yuba Bottom to ascend on the main ridge to the
south (which point is 19 miles above Dutch Flat by trail, and
about 22J miles by our line), called Yuba Bottom.

This point is at the head of the lower canons and falls, between
Yuba Bottom and Bear Valley.

In subsequent location, it will be necessary to run the line be-
tween these two points, (viz., head of Bear River to Yuba Bottom)
a little lower down on side-hill, as indicated on profile, for the fol-
lowing reasons : Tearing that the elevation of Yuba Bottom might
prove too high, the lino was run from head of Bear River, at our
maximum grade, in order to gain as much elevation as possible.
But on reaching Yuba Bottom, it was found that this gave more
elevation than was necessary; therefore the last half mile of
line was run down on to Yuba Bottom. The last elevations show,
that a grade of 80 feet per mile can be obtained from the head of
Bear River to Yuba Bottom.

From this point (Yuba Bottom), the line follows the river for
about one mile, passing through a short canon, and emerging at
very near the level of water surface in river (called Hall's Canon.)

From this point the liri£ was first run for about six miles up the
river valley, taking to side-hill at the two upper canons, the line
being carried up to the upper ford, at head of Wilson's Cut-Off;
but finding that the summit could not be reached without increas-
ing grade on the remaining distance, our parties proceeded to sum-
mit, from which a line was run doAvn on south side-hill of Yuba, at
maximum grade, striking into the valley line, at head of first small
canon (about one mile above Yuba Bottom), called Hall's Canon.

The location, therefore is carried from Hall's Canon, on South
side-hill of Yuba, at maximum grades, into lower end of Summit
Valley (about 3& miles below summit of Sierras), crossing the old
Truckee Emigrant Trail, near Kidd's Reservoir, about half way up
to the top of ridge, the line striking the lower end of Summit Val-

le}^ about the level of Yuba Eiver ; running thence straight across
Summit Yalley, about two miles, at a grade of about 25 feet per
mile, to a point on the south side of Summit Yalley, near Cook's
old cabin, the line takes to side-hill on the right, and in 1J mile
farther reaches the summit of Sierras, with a cutting of about
fifty feet.

By commencing the last named ascent a little further back in
Summit Yalley, the summit can be reached with maximum grades
Avithout any excavation. The elevation of surface at summit is
7,027 feet above top of levee at Sacramento.

DESCENT ON EASTERN SIDE OS SIERRA NEVADA.

Pursuing its course from the summit easterly, the line com-
mences its descent with maximum grade, and, passing to the right,
is carried for next two mile's over a steep, rocky side-hill, on which
will be found quite heavy rock cutting : thence turning abruptly to
the right, it enters upon side-hill of Strong's Ravine, and, running
up the same, about one mile, crosses over, and is carried down over
a smooth side-hill, to a point 600 feet higher than the south-west
corner of Donner Lake, thence pursuing its course along the side-
liill for about three miles, it encounters Coldstream Ravine, and
runs up the same a little over a mile.

Crossing Coldstream, the line follows along down its south side-
hill to within about a quarter of a mile of the Main Truckee, where
turning to left, it crosses the valley of Donner Creek, accomplish-
ing the descent in about 11J miles of downward maximum grade.
Thence the line was carried about five miles down the valley of
Truckee River, and the survey terminated at a point 128 miles from
Sacramento.

The object of this survey being to accomplish the crossing of the
Sierras with a Railroad line, it was considered unnecessary, at this
time, to extend the survey any further down the Truckee River;
barometrical elevations were taken from our line up the Truckee
River to Lake Bigler, and also down the same to the lower end of
Truckee Meadows, showing its average fall to be only about 35 feet
per mile.

I also carried a series of observations down Steamboat Yalley to
Steamboat Springs, thence across the Washoe Mountains (via Vir-
ginia, Flowery and Six Mile Canon) to the Carson River, thence

down the same to Fort Churchill — a profile of which is shown on
the small, general profile of grades.

A continuation of our line down the Truckee to Big Bend fol-
lows the same, from terminus of survey, 13 miles, to Neil's Ranch,
or Henness Eoad ; thence 7 miles to Stout's crossing of Truckee ;
thence through the Truckee Meadows and across head of Steam-
boat Yalley eight miles to Stone's crossing or Western base of
Washoe Mountains ; thence 23 miles, through Washoe Mountains,
to Big Bend of Truckee, or edge of Humboldt Desert, making the
total distance about 178 miles.

No obstacle exists, and a line, with light grades over exceedingly-
smooth surface, can be carried from Stout's crossing of Truckee, up
Steamboat Yalley, to its head; thence through Washoe Yalley into
Eagle Yalley, which opens into Carson Valley; thence down the
Carson Eiver to Fort Churchill, or edge of Desert, making, how-
ever, a longer line than that down Truckee.

GRADES.

The following table of grades extends from Lincoln (25 miles
from Sacramento, and six miles from westerly base) to terminus of
survey (or four miles beyond eastern base of mountains), or in-
cludes 11 miles beyond base of mountains. The average grade
from Sacramento to Lincoln (25 miles) being six feet per mile.

TABLE OF GRADES.

PLANE, FEET

3,000
3,000
1,000
3,000
4,500
6,500
4,000
4,300
6,300
3,200
500

12,700
3,300
5,000
6,000
7,100
1,300
2,500
1,800

17,250
1,000
1,000
1,700
2,500
2,000
2,000
3,000

15,000

11,000

GRADE
ASCENDS
PER MILE.

Level

105

116

105

GRADE I1 LENGTH
DE3CTND ; OF

PER MILE ! PLANE. FEET

4,000
6,750

18,250
3.000
1J000
6.000

13,500

17,500
1.000
3,500
1,000
3,500
1,000
2,500
2,000

13,000
1,000
1,000
4,000

17,000
1,250
1,000
1,000
4,000

14,000
3,000
4,000

10,500
1,000

GRADE
ASCENDS

PER MILE.

53
105

Level

105

Level

105

Level

105

Level

105

Level

105

Level

105

Level

105

GRADE
DESCEND
PER MILE.

.ENGTH GRADE

OF ASCENDS

PLANE, FEET PER MILE.

500
5,000
3,000
3,000
38.000
2.000

Looo

25,000
2.750
3,500
2,000

57,500
1,750
2,500

13,750

45,000
1,750

15,250
2.500
6,500
3.200
2,750
3,500
1,000
2,000

Level

105

Level

105

Level

105

Level

105

GRADE DE-
SCENDS

PER MILE.

Summit

105

Level

105

Level

SUMMARY OP GRADES.

grade.

MILES

FEET PKR

ASCENDING.

DESCENDING.

MILE.

0.56

0.86

1.89

1.04

1.80

5.08

1.42

1.53

i 1.38

8.39

8.03

105

43.08

11.41

116

2.84

Level

11.19

1.33

Total distance

Lincoln to

87.63

15.20

From which it appears that upon the western slope :

No. of miles of Ascending grade 116 ft. per mile ) ...2.84 miles,
No. of miles of Ascending grade 105 ft. per mile J ..43.08 "

No. of miles of Ascending Grade 84 ft. per mile 8.03 "

No. of miles of Ascending Grade 79.75 ft. per mile...9.77 "

No. of miles of Asceuding Grade 65 ft. per mile 1.53 "

No. of miles of Ascending Grade 53 ft. per mile 5.08 "

No. of miles of Level 11.19 ■ "

"While upon the eastern side, or descent, there are 11.41 miles of
grade, of 105 ft. per mile.

The total elevation of grade overcome at Summit is 7,000 feet.

That the elevation overcome in crossing the summit of Sierra
Nevada is greater than that upon any other line of road in the
Lnited States, is true. But it is no less true that the grades em-
ployed in reaching the summit, are less than the maximum grade
employed on important roads in the United States; the Pennsyl-
vania Central having ten miles of grade of 95 feet per mile, while
the Baltimore and Ohio Bailroad has one plane, 15 miles in length,
on which are 11 J continuous miles of grade of 116 feet per mile,
and 3^ of 100 feet per mile. A portion of the Virginia Central
Bailroad was operated successfully a period of five years over two

miles of grades of 800 feet per mile, with curves of 300, and one
as small as 238 feet radius — with a 30-ton locomotive engine.

By referring to the above table of grades, it will be seen that the
longest piece of continuously ascending maximum grade of 105
feet per mile, is about 10 miles; all of these heavy grades being
relieved at frequent intervals by lesser grades or levels. So that
on no portion of the road will there be so long a piece of continu-
ously ascending grade of 105 feet per mile, as upon the 116 feet
grades of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

It is deemed unnecessary, here, to enter upon a calculation of
the effective power of locomotive engines upon different gradients,
General McClellan having given very full notes of the results of
his investigations upon the subject, in his memoranda on P. R. R.,
published in the Report of the Secretary of War upon P. R. R.
Surveys. The following extracts from his Report are given here :

" On the Pennsylvania Central Eoad, are gradients of 95 feet per mile, for 9^-
miles. Passenger trains ascend this grade with a velocity of 24 miles per hour
and descend at 20 per hour.

" The working load of the heavy freight engines (weighing 65,000 lbs., on eight
drivers), on the 95 feet gradient, is 12 5 tons net. or about 208 tons, including
tender and cars."

Of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, he says :

'• The most interresting and analogous case, however, to which I can refer, is
that of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, one of the great lines in the United
States, alluded to in a previous part of this article, as connecting the seaboard
with the valley of the Mississippi across the Alleghany Mountains.' In the year
1850. 447,000 tons of merchandise and 180,000 passengers were transpoited on
this Road, the receipts amounting to $1,343,000, the road being only about h< If
completed. When finished to the Ohio river, the receipts are expected to amount
to $3,000,000. On this road are heavy gradients, with several curves of 600 feet
radius, and some of four hundred feet. It is to the mountain district of the road
just opened, that I wish particularly to invite attention, and for this purpose an
extract is made from the official report of the Chief Engineer, Mr. Latrobe, one of
the most distinguished engineers of North America, in which he describes the
route and grades over the Alleghany Mountains."

'•' At about a mile below this point, the high grade of 116 feet per mile begins and
coitinues about 112- miles, crossing the Potomac from Virginia into Maryland near
the beginning of the grade, and thence ascending the steep side slopes of Savage
river and Crab Tree Creek, to the summit, at the head of the latter, a total dis-
tance of about 15 miles. Upon the last three and a half miles of which, the grade
is reduced to about 100 feet per mile. From the summit, the line passes for
about 19 miles through the level and beautiful tract of country, so well known
as the Glades, and near their western border the route crosses \hi Maryland
boundary, at a point about sixty miles from Cumberland, and passes into the
State of Virginia, in whose territory it continues thence to the terminus on the
Ohio. From the Glades, the line descends by a grade of 116 feet per mile, for eight
and a half miles, and over very rugged ground, and thence ihree and a half miles
further to Cheat River, which it crosses at the mouth of Salt Lick Creek. The
route, immediately after crossing this river, ascends along the broken slopes of

the Laurel Hill, by a grade of 105 feet per mile for five miles, to the next summit,
passing the dividing ridge by a tunnel of 4,100 feet in length; and whence, after
three miles of light grade, a descent by the grade of 105 feet per mile for five miles
is made to the Valley of Raccoon Creek, by which and the Valley of the Three
Forks Greek, the Tygarts Valley River is reached in fourteen miles more, at the
Turnpike Bridge above described, and 103J miles from Cumberland."

Upon the Virginia Central Eailroad, the Alleghany Mountains
•were crossed with grades of 296 feet per mile, and the road ope-
rated successfully a peried of over five years.

Reference is had to a pamphlet published by Chas. Ellet, Esq.,
the Engineer of the road, who says :

EASTERN SIDE.

" The length of descent, from summit to foot of grade, on eastern side, is
2 37-100 miles.

" The road descends in this distance 610 feet.
"The average grade is, therefore, 25*7 feet per mile.
" The maximum grade is 296 feet per mile.

WESTERN SIDE.

"Length of descent 2 2-100 miles.

"Road descent in this distance 450 feet.

"Average grade is 223 feet per mile.

"Maximum grade is 280 feet per mile.

" On both sides of mountains, the ruling curves are described with a radius of
300 feet, on which the grade is 237 feet per mile."

" The admirable engines relied on to perform the extraordinary duties imposed
upon them in the passage of this summit have failed but once in this period — 2\
years — to make their regular trips. The mountain has been covered with deep
snow for many weeks in succession, and the cuts have been filled, for long pe-
riods, many feet in depth, with drifted snow; the ground has been covered with
sleet and ice, and every impediment due to bad weather and inclement seasons
has been encountered, and successfully surmounted in working the tracks.

"The total weight of engines is 55,000 lbs., or 11\ tons, when the boiler and
tank are supplied with fuel and water enough for a trip of eight miles."

" Ascending engines stop daily on a grade of 280 feet per mile, and are there
held by the brakes, while the tanks are being filled, and are started again, at the
signal, without difficulty."

With the practical experience afforded by the workings of these
roads, it may be safely assumed, that a thirty-ton engine, with eight
drivers, will ascend the maximum grades of this road with an or-
dinary passenger train at a speed of twenty miles per hour.

That an engine of the same class will ascend these grades, with
a freight train weighing 150 tons, at a speed of 13 miles per hour.

The following is taken from memoranda of Gen. McClellan on
subject of Pacific Railroad :

Calculations for a 30-ton Engine on 6 drivers, total adhesive Weight..67, 200 pounds.

By formula 1, maximum load on a level is 1,680 tons.

By formula 2, maximum grade up which this engine can draw a

load of 76 tons is : '401 feet.

By formula 4, the maximum grade for same load is...; 281 feet.

By formula 1, the maximum load for grade of 150 feet is 186 tons.

By formula 3, the maximum load for same grade is 133jtous.

By formula 1, the maximum load for grade of 200 feet is 146 tons.

By formula 3, the maximum load for same grade is 104Jtons.

COMPARISON OF ELEVATIONS OVERCOME.

Koute. Length.

Miles.

Boston route 500

tf. Y. Central 400

K Y. and Erie 460

Philadelphia route 340

Baltimore route 390

Charleston route 490

Savannah route 440

Santiago 110

Central Pacific 140

It will thus be seen, that the sum of ascents and descents upon
this line are but 1,800 feet more than upon the Baltimore and Ohio
Eailroad, our line crossing a summit of 7,000 feet, the elevation of
summit on that road being only 2,700 feet.

The small per centage of total rise and fall upon this line, as com-
pared with the altitude of summit, is due to the fact that there are
no undulatory grades — the rise and fall is constant, no elevation
being lost.

GRADES ON LIEUT. BECKWITH S ROUTE FROM LASSENS TO SALT LAKE,

451 MILES.

The following in a statement of grades from Lassens to Salt
Lake, taken from Lieut. Beckwith's Profile, assuming his projected
improvements in location :

Summit

Total Rise

Max.

Slevation.

and tall.

Grade

Feet.

1,440

4,700

650

2,100

1,720

6,500

2,400

5,600

2,700

7,000

116

1,400

5,000

1,400

5,000

2,640

4,340

119

7,000

8,800

105

Ascending Descending
Miles. Grade, Feet Grade, Feet
1'er Mile. Per Mile.

Lassen's to Junction MainForks of Humboldt... 145 4

Junction Forks to Creek 85 31

To stream near Summit 8 89

To summit Humboldt Mountains 1 25

Summit to mountain stream 3 25

To Camp 16 8 58

To Camp 15 15 4

To Camp 14 28 7

To Camp 13 10 21

To Camp 12 20 Level.

To Camp 10, Fish Creek 28 21

To Point on Fish Creek , 16 Level.

To Camp 8, Granite Mountains 40 10

ToCamp6 24 0J

ToCamp5 15 12

To shore of SaltLake 21 10

To Camp 3 13 18

To Oquirrh Mountains, or opposite Salt Lake

City 21 8

451

The highest grade shown being 8 miles of 89 feet grade, which
can probably be reduced to 50 or 60 feet per mile.

ALIGNMENT.

The first 25 miles of line from Sacramento to Lincoln will be
generally straight. From Lincoln to Barmore's, or six miles
further, the least radius of curvature will be 1,432 feet,

From Barmore's (or western base) to the Truckee Biver, or east-
ern base of Sierra Nevada, the line is mostly on side hill ; there is,
consequently, a preponderance of curved line rendered necessary
by the sinuosities of side hill and projecting points.

The least radius of curvature, however, upon the line is 573 feet,
or a ten-degree curve.

The Baltimore and Ohio Bailroad has several curves of 600 and
some of 400 feet radius. (See Beport of General McClellan.)

The Virginia Central Bailroad had curves of 300 feet radius, on
which the grade was 237 feet per mile. One curve upon that Boad
had a radius of 238 feet. (See Beport of Chas. Ellett, Esq.)

Curves of 500 feet radius are common upon many of our Eastern
roads, and are safely traversed at a speed of 30 miles per hour.

For a particular description of the alignment of this road, atten-

tion is invited to the large map of location (scale 400 feet per inch)
exhibiting each curve and tangent, with the length and radius
marked upon it.

Also, to the tabular arrangement of the same, in which each
curve and tangent is laid down, from which it will be seen that be-
tween Barmore's and Truckee River, a distance of 92 miles, there
is of straight line :

No. of Curves of 573 feet radius 157

No. of Curves of 716 feet radius 65

No. of Curves of 955 feet radius 140

No. of Curves of 1,432 feet radius 65

No. of Curves of 1,910 feet radius 62

No. of Curves of 2,865 feet radius 23

From the eastern base of mountains to Big Bend of Truckee, the
length of curved line will not exceed thirty per cent, of the whole
distance, the curves being generally of over 1,500 feet radius.

Thus, it will be seen that the alignment of this road compares
favorably with that of many of the most important roads of the
Atlantic States.

SNOWS.

The argument of obstruction from snow having been frequently
urged against the Central route for Pacific Railroad, I have taken
much pains to arrive at correct conclusions upon this subject, and
feel warranted in the statement, that a Railroad Line, upon this
route, can be kept open during the entire year for the transaction of its
business.

It is true that snow falls to a greater depth upon the elevated
portions of this line than upon the lines of Railroads in the At-
lantic States.

The depth at which snow lies upon this route is plainly distin-
guishable at any season.

The trees are generally covered with moss down to the level of
the snow, and thousands of them can be seen entirely free from
•moss up to a certain bight, and almost entirely covered with moss
from that bight.

Frequent marks have also been made by persons who have tra-
versed the route on snow shoes, during the winter, by axe marks
chopped in the tree at the level of the snow.

The limbs of the small trees also afford indications of the hight
of snow ; those limbs lying beneath the snow maintaining their
original or natural position, while those above the snow-line are
almost universally bent downwards, and not unfrequently broken
by the weight of snow.

These observations lead to the conclusion that the greatest depth
of undisturbed snow is 13 feet at the summit.

In places where drifts occur, the depth is of course greater, and
at corresponding points, less than the average level.

This may, at first, seem to be a serious obstacle to the passage
of Eailroad Trains. But this depth of 13 feet is not the result of a
single storm, but the accumulation of a number of successive storms
occurring during the winter.

Snow does not melt very rapidly at this elevation, during the
winter.

A storm will occur, and snow fall to the depth, perhaps, of three
or four feet.

Another storm will, perhaps, add two or three, or four feet to
this depth.

Successive storms add to its depth; but it is believed that its
highest level is not over 13 feet.

The town of Dutch Flat, 72 miles from Sacramento, and 40 miles
from summit may be considered the foot of snow line on western
side — snow seldom falling more than two feet there, and melting
off in a day or two.

The average depth of snow at lower end of Donner Lake is about
six feet.

At Neil's Ranch, on the Truckee Eiver, 28 miles easterly from
the summit, I am assured by Mr. Neil, that the greatest depth of
snow last winter was 18 inches, and that during the five years he
has lived there, it has not exceeded three feet in depth.

It may be safely concluded that the line of deep snows termi-
nates where our line strike the Truckee Eiver, or, say, 12 miles
from the summit, making 52 miles of snow line.

It will also be remembered that our line is almost exclusively a»
side-hill line, from which the snow can be more easily removed than
from a level surface.

It is only necessary, then, to start an engine with snow-plows,
from the summit each way, at the commencement of a storm, clear-

ing the snow as it falls. A similar course of procedure at each sucT
cessive storm, will keep the track open during the entire winter.

It is also stated that a crust soon forms upon the snow, which
prevents its drifting badly.

The only point where we shall encounter a level surface of snow,
is in Summit Yalley, for about two miles.

By elevating the track at this point, no trouble need be antici-
pated.

The great dread, and real danger of a storm in the mountains,
does not arise from the depth of snow, but from the entire absence
of shelter and relief in the mountains, there being no houses or ac-
commodations, excepting upon the wagon roads across to Washoe.

The Placerville wagon road is kept open for travel during the
entire winter, hotels being established every few miles along the
route. "With a railroad built upon this route, this objection would /
also be entirely obviated.

TUNNELS.

Upon the line, as located, but four tunnels appear upon the pro-
file, but upon further examination, it has been deemed expedient to
cut through several sharp projecting points, instead of carrying the
line around them,

It is estimated that the cost of these tunnels will not exceed the
cost of the increased length of line around these points.

It will be observed that the tunnels are comparatively short, the
longest being 1,370 feet in length ; they can all be worked from
either end, reducing the greatest consecutive length of tunneling
to 685 feet.

They are in rock, generally granite, and require no shafting.

The cost of shafting in long tunnels is usually one-third the
whole cost of tunnel.

Their lengths are as follows :

1 500 feet long.

1 1,300 feet Ions;.

1,200 feet long.

1 600

1 1,370

1,100

1 800

1 1,250

400

1 1,200

1 1,300

1,070

1 1,000

1 1,370

1,100

1 1,100

1 300

450

18 17,410

Making 18 tunnels, with an aggregate length of 17,410 feet, cost-
ing, at $50 per linear foot, $870,500.

The longest tunnel can be excavated in thirteen months, at the
rate of two feet per clay.

The following statistics were given in report of Oxen. McClel"
lan to the Secretary of War, on Pacific Bailroad :

Nerthe Tunnel, Fra nee— 15,153 feet long; 24 shafts; aggregate
length of which was 7,589 feet; deepest of which was 610 feet; in
very hard limestone; dimensions, 29 i by 26i feet.

Its cost was as follows :

For mining body of tunnel $705,982

For mining shafts 109,081

Masonry fpr shafts 49,069

Lining for body of tunnel 423,711 .

Cost of aqueduct 10,607

Total cost of tunnel $1,298,450

Cost of mining main body of tunnel, $46.58 per linear foot.

Woodhead Tunnel, England — 3J- miles long 5 shafts ; 400 to 600
feet deep; rock, granite, or mill-stone rock; entire cost, $1,026,705;
cost of tunnel, including shafting, $55 per linear foot. Excavated
at the rate of eight feet per day.

Uppingham Tunnel — 1,320 feet long; cost $40 per linear foot.

Blftck Rock Tunnel, Pennsylvania — 1,932 feet long; rock, grey-
wacke; six shafts; cost $77 per linear foot.

The cost per cubic yard of excavating tunnels in the United
States, has been :

Lehigh, very hard granite $4 36 per linear foot.

Schuylkill State.....1: 2 00 <;

Union State 2 09 « «

Blue Eidge Tunnel 4 00 " «

A section of tunnel, averaging 20-]-17 feet, contains, 12f cubic
yards per linear foot.

TIME CONSUMED IX MAKING THE TRIP WITH PASSENGER TRAINS
FROM SACRAMENTO TO VIRGINIA STATION.

Distance. Speed per Hour. Time.

Sacramento to Barmore's , 31 miles. 31 miles. 1 hour.

Stoppage at Barmore's :30

Barmore's Summit 81 miles. 20 miles. 4

Carried forward 112 5:30

Distance. Speed per Hour. Tinre.

Brought forward 112 5:30

Four stoppages, 15 minutes each 1

Summit of Truckee Eiver 11 miles. 15 miles. :45

Stopptge :15

Truckea to Neil's 17 miles. 34 miles. :30

Neil's to Stone's of Yira'inia Station.. 15 miles. 34 miles. :30

155 miles.

Total time consumed in making trip 8:30

or 82 hours.

A train leaving Sacramento at 6 A. M., would arrive at Yirginia
Station (13 miles north of Yirginia) at 2.30 p. M., passengers reach-
ing Yirginia City at 4.30 p. m.; Gold Hill, 4.50 p u.; Silver City,
5.15; Chinatown, 6.10, and Carson City, 7.15 p. M.

Freight trains leaving Sacramento at 6 A. m., would reach Yir-
ginia Station at 7 P. M., including all stoppages.

Eeturning, the passengers leaving Yirginia depot at 5 p. m.,
would arrive in Sacramento in time to take the 2 o'clock boat, and
arrive in San Francisco the same evening.

ESTIMATE OF COST.

The estimated cost of this road will be found to exceed the aver-
age cost of railroads in the Atlantic States, but is nevertheless a
cheaper line than has been heretofore estimated for the crossing of
the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The rugged nature of the country over which the line passes, the
character of the excavations (which for 90 miles are almost exclu-
sively rock cuttings), the high cost of labor in California, the extra
weight of rail (estimated at 75 lbs. per yard), with its cost of trans-
portation to California, all tend to swell the cost of road beyond
the average cost of railroads in the Atlantic States.

But whea it is considered that this line accomplishes the crossing
of Sierra Nevadas (by far the most difficult and expensive portion
of the great line across our continent), is carried over an elevation
of 7,000 feet in hight, entirely avoids the second summit of Sierra
Nevada, saves 184 miles in distance, and $13,500,000 in cost to the
Pacific Bailroad, its cost of 888,000 per mile can scarcely be deemed
high.

The Boston and Providence Bailroad cost $81,273 00 per mile.

The Boston and Lowell Bailroad cost 78,636 00 "

The New York and Erie Bailroad, about 80,000 00

The Hudson Biver Bailroad, about 80,000 00 «

COST OF EOAD FROM SACRAMENTO TO STATE LINE,

MILES.

OR NEIL'S— 140

STATIONS.

Sacramento to Lincoln

Lincoln to Barmore's

Barmore's to Nevada Boad

Nevada Boad to Clipper Gap....

Clipper Cap to Long Bavine

Long Bavine to Gravel Bidge...

Gravel Bidge to Bear Biver

Bear Biver to South Yuba

Yuba to Hall's Canon

Hall's Canon to Summit Valley.

In Summit Valley

To Summit Sierras

Summit to Strong's Canon

Strong's Canon to Truckee

Tnickee to Neil's or State Line.
Add eighteen tunnels

Total cost to State Line 140

25
6

12
6

12
9
5

21
1

11
2
o

10
16

Cost
per Mile.

$50,000
60,000
90,000
50,000
80,000

110,000
85.000

100,000
75,000

100,000
75.000

150/J00

150,000

100,000.
70,000

Totals.

$1,250,000
360,000

1,080,000
300,000
960,000
990,000
425,000

2,100,000
75,000

1,100,000
150.0C0
300,000
300,000

1,000,000

1,120,000
870,000

$12,380,000

Or an average cost of $88,428 per mile.

ADDITIONAL COST TO STONE'S CROSSING OF TRUCKEE OR VIRGINIA
STATION— 15 MILES.

Neil's to Stout's..
Stout's to Stone's.

Total cost

Making total cost.

Lost

Miles per Mile.

7'$70,000
8 50,000

$490,000
400,000

15 $890,000

155 $13,270,000

ADDITIONAL COST TO BIG BEND OF TRUCKEE OR HUMBOLDT
DESERT— 23 MILES.

Miles

(Jo.^t
per Mile.

Total.

Making total cost

178

$70,000

$1,610,000

$14,880,000

Or an average cost of $83,600 per mile.

ADDITIONAL COST OF A RAILROAD LINE FROM BIG BEND OF TRUC-
KEE TO LASSEN'S MEADOWS, OR TO A CONNECTION WITH LIEUT.
BECKWITH'S LINE ON HUMBOLDT RIYER— 104 MILES.

Miles

Lost 1
per Mile. Total.

From Big Bend of Truckee to Lassen's
Meadows 104

Making total cost to Lassen's Meadows |282

60,000 66,240,000
;S21,120.000

On an average cost of 874,900 per mile.

ADDITIONAL COST OF LINE FROM LASSEN'S MEADOWS TO SALT
LAKE, TAKEN FROM ESTIMATES OF LIEUT. BECKWITH, P. R. R,
REPORTS— 451 MILES.

j Cost
Miles; per Mile.

Lassen's Meadows to Salt Lake 451045,000 620,295,000

Making total cost of line from Sacramento

to Salt Lake 1733! 41,415,000

On an average cost of 656.500 per mile.

ESTIMATED COST OF LINE FROM SALT LAKE TO COUNCIL BLUFFS,
BY LIEUT. BECKWITH, P. R. R. REPORTS— 1.125 MILES.

Goat of Retries

Council Bluffs to Salt Lake, 1,125 miles 858,485,000

Making total cost from Council Bluffs to Sacramento,

1,858 miles 99,870,000

For purpose of comparison, add cost from Sacramento

to Benicia, 58 miles 2,630.000

Gives total length, Council Bluffs to Benicia, 1,916

miles. Total cost 102.500,000

Estimate by Beckwith's route, 2,100 miles. Total

cost 116,000,000

Saving in distance, 184 miles; in cost 13,500,000

RECAPITULATION AND ESTIMATE OF ENTIRE COST OF PACIFIC RAIL-
ROAD LINE, TAKING LIEUT. BECKWITH ESTIMATES, FROM COUNCIL
BLUFFS TO LASSEN'S MEADOWS, AND THENCE via THIS ROUTE TO

SACRAMENTO -DISTANCE, 1,858 MILES.

Council Bluffs to Black Hills |

Black Hills to South Pass |

South Pass to Fort Bridger

Fort Bridger to Salt Lake

Timpanogos Canon

Salt Lake to Lassen's Meadows

Lassen's to Big Bend, Truckee

Big Bend to California State Line

State Line to Sacramento

Total

520
291
131
173

10
451
104

38
140

Cost
per Mile.

$35,000
75,000
50,000
60.000

150.000
45,000
60,000
66,000
88,428

1,858 $99,870,000

$18,200,000
21,825,000

6,550,000
10,380,000

1.500,000
20,295,000

6.240,000

2,500,000
12,380,000

The importance of this route to the great enterprise of which it
is destined to form a link, cannot be more clearly manifested than
in the reduction of cost in constructing the Pacific Railroad.

In all the previous comparisons of cost and distance, the Central
Route has labored under great disadvantage, and has not taken the
rank among routes, to which, by its merits, it was entitled.

A reduction in cost of 813,500,000, and a saving in distance of
184 miles of line, present features which may well invite considera-
tion from the friends of that project.

GENERAL REMARKS.

it will be observed that the estimates of cost and distances from
Big Bend of Truckee to Salt Lake are made upon the Beckwith or
Humboldt route, a distance of 733 miles.

"While it is possible that a more southerly line can be found along
or near the Simpson route, in the absence of surveys, or data for
estimate, no reliable opinion can be formed of its feasibility or prob-
able cost.

Our line, at Big Bend of Truckee, is in position to join an exten-
sion on either route.

According to the itinerary of Captain Simpson, it does not appear
that the more southerly route presents any advantage in distance
to Salt Lake Citv.

The distance given by Captain Simpson from Carson City to
Camp Floyd is 554 miles. Adding to this the distance from Sacra-
mento to Carson City, 142 miles, and the distance from Camp Floyd
to Salt Lake City — say 35 miles — it gives the total distance from
Sacramento to Salt Lake City as 731 miles.

From our line at Big Bend of Truckee, via Simpson route to Salt
Lake, the distance would be about the same as to Salt Lake City,
on the Humboldt route, but should the main line of lower road be
carried round the head of Utah Lake, and up the Timpanogos, it
would make the lower line about 50 miles the shortest.

If a line can be found from the Sink of Humboldt across to
Gravelly Ford (on that river,) it will shorten the Humboldt route
about fifty miles.

There are three important considerations, however, which give
the route up the Humboldt Biver a manifest advantage over any
other route for a railroad line.

First — Its availability for a connection with Oregon and "Wash-
ington.

Lassen's Meadows are only about eighty miles south of the forty-
second parallel of latitude, which parallel is the southern boundary
of Oregon, there being a good emigrant road from that point to
Jacksonville and Fort Lane, in Oregon, the line following around
the northerly end of Mud Lake, up Black Bock Creek, southerly
end of Goose Lake, and between the Klamath Lakes to Jackson-
ville, from which point a good railroad line, with light grades, was
found (see reports of Lieutenants Williamson and Abbott) to
Portland on the Columbia Biver, the distance from Lassen's Mead-
ows to Jacksonville being about 280 miles.

Second — The recent discoveries of silver on the Humboldt Biver
in the vicinity of Lassen's Meadows.

The well known discoveries of silver ore in the Washoe Moun-
tains has drawn thither, in the last two years, a population of about
17,000 souls, most of whom are hardy, able-bodied miners. Xu-
merous nourishing towns and villages have sprung into existence,
permanent improvements have been made, and but a few years
will elapse before a new State will be formed out of that portion of
Nevada Territory.

Within the last few months, discoveries of silver have been made
on the Humboldt, which are said to rival those of Washoe. Already
a new city is in existence, and hundreds of miners have gone there.

There will of course be but a small emigration there this winter ;
but next spring and summer will undoubtedly witness an influx of"
population hardly second to that of Washoe.

The mines are stated to be of great extent and richness, many
of the cut-croppings assaying over $1,000 per ton. A number of
tons of ore have been sent to Sacramento and San Francisco for
trial, the results of which have proved them to be of extraordinary
richness.

Cinnabar and coal have also been discovered in this locality.

Several mills are in the course of erection, and permanent im-
provements are being rapidly made.

Being on the main emigrant route to California, and accessible
from both Oregon and California, the accessions to its population
cannot fail to be large; and it will not be many years before
the new State of Humboldt will apply lor admission into the Union.

Thirdly — From the feasibility of this as a Eailroad route, and the
character of soi1, etc., along its route.

After striking the Humboldt at Lassen's, there are 190 miles of
unobstructed valley, on which the grade for 145 miles is only four
feet per mile ; 36 miles are level ; 24 miles has a grade of half a
foot per mile ; 160 miles has a grade of four feet ; 50 miles has a
grade of seven and eight feet ; 53 miles a grade of eight and ten
feet; 43 miles a grade of eighteen to twenty-one feet; 40 miles of
from twenty-five to thirty-one feet : 18 miles of grade of fifty-eight
feet ; there being only eight miles of a higher grade, in eighty-nine
feet, which can undoubtedly be reduced.

The elevation at Lassen's is only about 250 feet lower than the
Big Bend of Truckee, the distance 104 miles.

There will be then 539 miles of light grades, not exceeding 31
feet per mile, on a line of 555 miles long — a feature of no little im-
portance in determining the location of the Pacific Eailroad.

The valley of the Humboldt has been traversed by many thou-
sands of Emigrants to Oregon and California, and is well known
to embrace many valleys of alluvial and fertile soil.

The general character of the soil in the great basin is barren and
sterile, except where intersected by rivers. The valley of the
Humboldt has received the largest share of the emigrant travel,
for the reason that it afforded good grass, and water in abundance,

Being more inviting to emigrants, it will settle up more rapidly,

and thereby greatly facilitate the construction of a railroad line on
this route.

Accompanying this report, will be found the following Maps,
Profiles, etc. :

A. Large map on a scale of 400 feet per inch (90 feet long), showing

the curves and tangents, from Dutch Flat to Truckee Eiver.
for filing in Secretary of State's office.

B. Seventeen sheets of location, numbered 1 to 17, inclusive, scale

400 feet per inch, showing curves and tangents, from Bar-
more's (or western base), to Dutch Flat, for filing, as above.
(Also copies of same.

C. Five large maps (20 feet long), scale 400 feet per inch, showing-

curves and tangents, as follows:
No.'l. Barmore's to Clipper Gap.
No. 2. Clipper Cap to Dutch Flat.
]N o. 3. Dutch Flat to Battlesnake Bluffs.
No. 4. Battlesnake Bluffs to Summit.
No. 5. Summit to eastern terminus of survey.

D. Thirty-two sheets, numbered 1 to 32, scale 400 feet per inch,

exhibiting the angular line as run with projected curves and
tangents thereon.

E. Map (16 feet long) scale 5,000 feet per inch, exhibiting the coun-

try from San Francisco to terminus of survey, showing our
line, with adjoining towns and rivers, for ten miles on either
side, and connecting railroads.

F. Traced copy of the same.

G. Smaller map prepared for lithographing, showing whole coun-

try, from San Francisco to Big Bend of Truckee.
H. Britton and Bey's map of California.
I. United States Surveyor General's map of State.
J. Elliott's map of a portion of the State.
K. Eansom's map of San Francisco, and 40 miles round.
L. Map of Sacramento Y alley Eailroad, Sacramento to Folsom.

scale 5,000.
M. Map of California Central Eailroad, location, Folsom to Marys-

ville.
N. Map of California Northern Eailroad. Marysvilleto Oroville.
O. Map of survey, Sacramento to Benieia,
1*. Map of survey, Marysville to Benieia.
Q. Map of survey, Folsom to Placerville.
R. Smith's map of survey for Canal np North Fork of American

Eiver to Lake Bigler.
S. Connected map of Lieutenant Beckwith's surveys, showing the

topography, etc. from Benieia to Salt Lake.
T. Map of Captain Simpson's route to Camp Floyd.
U. Large map compiled in office of Secretary of War, showing the

country west of the Mississippi Eiver, with all the surveys

for Pacific Eailroad laid down thereon.
V. Smaller map of routes, as above.

W. Map of Rancho del Paso, through which our line passes.

X. Map of City of Sacramento.

Y. ]\£ap of survey across Sacramento Yalley.

Z. Degroot's map of "Washoe mines, also Pierce's map of Washoe.

PROFILES.

a. Sheets, 1 to 34 inclusive, working profile of line as run (hori-
zontal scale, 400 feet ; vertical scale, 30 feet per inch).

K Profile of line to Dutch Flat (horizontal scale, 500 feet per inch ;
vertical scale, 50 feet per inch).

c. Two profiles of line reaching from Lincoln to Truckee River

(horizontal scale, 1,000 feet ; vertical scale, 100 feet per inch).

d. One profile, extending from Sacramento to Big Bend of Truckee,

also showing a section of Washoe Mountains, on a line from
Stout's to Fort Churchill (horizontal scale, 11,000 feet; ver-
tical scale 600 feet per inch).

e. Copy of same for filing in Secretary of State's office.

/. Profile of Lieutenant Beckwith's line, Salt Lake to Fort Read-
ing, containing profile of Noble's Pass.

g. Two sheets of profiles of various southern passes across Sierra
Nevada (published in Secretary of War's office).

7i. Barometric profile of reconnoisances in Sierra Nevada Moun-
tains, viz. : Georgetown route ; Dutch Flat Route ; Henness
Pass route via Nevada.
Also, a set of Pacific Railroad Reports, and all the maps, pro-
files, etc., relating thereto — published by "United States Gov-
ernment.

Our levels indicate that many of the passes in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains will be found, upon actual survey, much higher than
they have been represented.

The estimates of business, and revenue of Road, will be deferred
to another time in consequence of delay in procuring the statistics
of the Washoe trade and business.

In conclusion, I take this opportunity of expressing my obliga-
tions to Messrs. Edward Judah, Assistant in charge of Party ; John
R. Brown, in charge of leTels ; H. T. Hall, Topographer ; for the
able and satisfactory manner in which they performed the arduous
duties assigned them ; also to Wm. S. Watson, Esq., Chief Engineer
of California Northern Railroad, for valuable assistance in office;
to Dr. D. W. Strong, of Dutch Flat, who accompanied me in my
reconnoisance last fall, who was with me during the entire survey,
and whose experience in and knowledge of the mountains was of
the greatest assistance, and contributed to the success of the survey;
also, to S. B. Wyman, Esq., of Virginia; Mr. Neil, of Neilsburgh;

Mr. Applegate, of Empire Mills ; Messrs. Egbert and Brickell, cf
Illinoistown — who were with me on portions of the route; to Cbas.
Marsh, Esq., of Nevada, who accompanied me on the reconnois-
sance via Nevada and Henness Pass ; also to Messrs. John Shaw, of
Mormon Island, D. W. McKinney and Mr. Shankland, of George-
town— who accompanied me on the Georgetown reconnoissance ;
also, to Mr. Stout, of Stout's Crossing, Nevada Territory ; F. Moore,
Esq., of Dutch Elat ; and J. P. Bobinson, Esq., of Sacramento, for
courtesies extended.

Very respectfully.

THEODOKE D. JUDAH,

Chief Engineer Central Pacific Railroad of California..

ENGINEER'S OFFICE, ~»

Central Pacific E. E. or California, j

Sacramento, October 22, 186r> ^-^

To the President and Directors of the Central Pacific Bail-
road Company of California:

Gentlemen :

In accordance with a resolution of your board, passed October
9th, 1861, as follows :

" Resolved, That Mr. T. D. Judah, the Chief Engineer of this
Company, proceed to Washington on the steamer of the 11th Oct.
inst., as the accredited agent of the Central Pacific Eailroad Com-
pany of California, for the purpose of procuring appropriations of
land and U. S. Bonds from Government, to aid in the construction
of this Eoad."

I beg leave to report my return to California after an absence of
about ten months, having fully accomplished the objects of my

mission, a detailed and full account of which is herewith appended,
marked document "A."

A brief statement of some of the advantages accruing to your
Road through its connection with the Pacific Railroad bill, recent-
ly passed, seems necessary, in order to realize its advantages, and
secure the benefits and public consideration to which it is justly
entitled.

The theory of the Pacific Railroad bill recognizes existing Com-
panies at either end of the Road; while the central division, or
portion between the States of Kanzas and California, is committed
to the supervision of a company created by Act of Congress, de-
riving its existing powers and authority from the bill itself.

Upon the eastern side, the right to construct the road, from the
junction of the Missouri and Kanzas Rivers, through Kanzas, to
the 100th meridian of longitude west from Greenwich, with all the
grants, donations, etc , for about 350 miles, is given to the Leaven-
toorth, Pavmee, and Western Railroad Company of Kanzas.

The central division, or portion through the Territories of Ne-
braska, Utah and Nevada, to the eastern boundary of California,
a distance of about 1300 miles, is given to the Union Pacific Rail-
road Company, a Corporation created by Act of Congress; while" the
construction of the western division, reaching from the eastern
boundaiy of California, to the navigable waters of the Sacramento
River, or to the City of San Francisco, is assigned to the Central
Pacific Railroad Company of California, to whom are made the
grants of lands, bonds, etc., for that purpose.

The aid granted by the United States Government, to your Road,
is liberal, and will materially assist in constructing and completing
it.

ENUMERATION OF ADVANTAGES.

The first important advantage derived by 3^0 ur Road, consists in
the grant of the free right of way to a strip of land 400 feet in
width across all Government lands.

This is a liberal width, and precludes the possibility of building a
parallel road over your route, at many points, without occupying
a portion of your lands.

Secondly. The United States Government is obliged to extinguish

the Indian title to all lands donated to the Company, either for right
of way, or to the land granted on either side of your road.

Thirdly. In order to prevent speculation by individuals, who
may enter upon and take up these lands, after the passage of the
Railroad bill, and before the Company has time to locate its line with
accuracy, it is provided "that within two years after the passage of
this act, said Company shall designate the general route of its road,
as near as may be, and file a map of the same in the Department of
the Interior, whereupon the Secretary of the Interior shall cause
the lands within fifteen miles of said designated route, or routes, to
be withdrawn from pre-emption, private entry and sale ; and when
any portion of said route shall be finally located, the Secretary of
the Interior shall cause the lands hereinbefore granted, to be sur-
veyed, and set off, as fast as may be necessary, for the purposes
herein named."

Before leaving Washington, I made a proper map, showing the
general route of our road, in accordance with the provision of the
bill, which map, accompanied by a written designation of the route,
I filed with the Secretary of -the Interior, who assured me that he
would give the necessary instruction to have the same withdrawn
from market. This has been done. Such lands are noio secured to
us, and cannot be pre-empted or purchased, until after our final lo-
cation, and until a survey by the United States authorities of these
lands.

The Department of the Interior also expressed a desire to co-
operate with our Company in preventing the cutting of timber on
these lands. It becomes, therefore, important for your board to de-
cide, if they will take any steps to prevent depredations upon these
timbered lands, until a final location is made of the whole, or a part
of their road.

Fourth. A grant of United States Bonds, to the amount of about
$6,000,000 is made to this Company. These bonds run for 30 years,
draw interest at the rate of six per cent., payable semi-annually,
by United States G-overnment, who cannot redeem them until their
expiration, or, for, say, 30 years, as is the case with their issue of
20 year bonds, which are redeemable, after five years, at the option
of the Government.

They are, therefore, the best class of Government bonds in mar-
ket, and will lead all others of her securities, now issued.

These bonds enure to your Company, as each section of 40 miles

is completed, west of the western base of the Sierra Nevada moun-
tains, at the rate of $16,000 per mile, — while for 150 miles from
such western base easterly, the amount is increased to $48,000 per
mile, and the same are paid over as each section of 20 miles is com-
pleted.

Your road exhibits a remarkably favorable peculiarity in this
respect.

"While most of the Eailroads constructed in the United States,
are encumbered with issues of mortgage bonds, on which the yearly
interest must be paid, as well as the bond itself at maturity, usually
taking, for that purpose, the earnings of the road, which otherwise
would be applied to the payment of dividends to stockholders.

Your Eoad, instead of issuing her own bonds, for the payment of
which, and the interest, she would have to provide, receives all the
benefits of nearly $50,000 per mile, or an aggregate of $6,000,000, of
United States bonds, the interest on which is regularly paid by the
Government, until their maturity. It is true that Government con-
templates the repayment of this loan at that time, but it is obvious
that Government will furnish very nearly business enough to the
road, to repay them before the bonds become due. Therefore, in-
stead of appropriating the net earnings of your road yearly, to the
payment of interest on bonds, there is no reason why such earnings
should not go to the stockholders in the shape of dividends.

This feature, peculiar to your road, is deserving of especial con-
sideration. These bonds will, probably, command a premium in
market, and, whenever our present difficulties are settled, will be
sought after in preference to all other issues, for foreign investment.

Fifth. The right to extend the road from Sacramento to San
Francisco, is given to your company, with all rights, grants, dona-
tions, etc., given to that portion of the line, west of the western
base of the Sierra Nevada.

Sixth. Perhaps the most important feature in the grant, made
to this Company, exists in authorization, or right given it to continue
on from the easterly line of the State of California eastwardly, and
construct, the line of Pacific Pailroad and Telegraph, until it meets
and connects with the line of the Union Pacific Eailroad and Tel-
egraph, coming from the east.

This virtually concedes to your Company the right to construct at
least one half of the line of the Pacific Railroad, and to receive all
the grants, donations, etc., therefor, without absolutely compelling
them so to do.

It becomes important, therefore, that a Eailroad survey be made
from the eastern boundary of the State eastwardly, to, say, Salt
Lake, for the purpose of determining the cost of a Eailroad line, and
to ascertain if sufficient inducement exists for your Company to
construct said road. I am positive in the opinion, that it will be
found advisable to undertake the construction of about 300 miles next
easterly from the State line of California.

VALUE OF LAND GEANTS.

The United States Government donates to your Company every
section of land (not sold, pre-empted, or otherwise disposed of), for
a distance of ten miles upon either side of the road. Mineral lands
are excepted from the operation of the Act, but wherever the same
contains timber, the timber thereon is granted to the Eailroad
Company.

The quantity of land, (if it were all available to the Company),
would be 6,400 acres per mile, or about 960,000 acres between Sac-
ramento and the eastern boundary of the State. From the western
base of the Sierra Nevada to State line, nearly all of these lands are
covered with timber, which becomes valuable as soon as a railroad
is built, on which it can be transported to market.

It is always difficult to estimate the worth of timber lands, their
value being dependent upon their quality, the density of the tim-
ber, the demand for, and facilities for conveying it to market.

The Saratoga and Sackett's Harbor Eailroad Company, of the
State of New York, who have 500,000 acres of timber land in that
State, in a report published by them, estimate the avails of its yield
as follows :

ESTIMATED TIMBER VALUE OF LANDS BELONGING TO THE SARATOGA
AND SACKETTS HARBOR RAILROAD.

Products.

Quantity.

Keu.il

Price at

Tide water

Total
value at
Tiiiewaier

Corded on
Line of
Koad.

Freight
on their
Kaiiroad.

Un otuei
Connect-
ng Roads

Nett
Proceeds

Wood

30 Cords

1 128-1000

5 Cords

2,280 Feet

13,680 Feet

$ 5 00

150 00

7 00

22 00

10 00

$150 00
192 00

$ 30 00
16 fi7

$ 75 00

16 6-,
12 50

5 70
34 20

17 10

$ 15 00
3 33
2 50
1 14
6 84

$ 30 00

162 00

Hemlock Bark..
Pine Lumber....

35 00| 12 50

50 16 5 70

136 80 34 20

102 60 17 10

15 00
31 92
27 36

Maple

6,840 Feet| 15 00

3 42

47 88

Total

$666 56

$159 00

$161 17

$ 32 23 S3 14. IP.

Thus it will be seen that they estimate their spar timber at
1 ^ spars per acre, as yielding a nett profit to them of $162 per
acre or a total of $81,000,000.

The whole nett proceeds of the production of their lands, they
estimate at $341 per acre, or an aggregate in round numbers of
$157,000,000. Their lands they assume to be worth $15 per acre,
afterwards, or $7,500,000.

They estimate the freights derived from one acre of timber land
and accruing to the Eailroad Company, to be $161 17, which on
their 500,000 acres amounts to $80,585,000. They also make the
statement, based upon the production of a good farm on the Illi-
nois Central Eailroad as a guide, that there is more freight on their
landed estate now ready for the cars, than can be produced from
the original and entire estate of the Illinois Central Eailroad Com-
pany in more than one half a century.

They also state, that a committee of capitalists, proposing to be-
come interested in this work, personally traversed the route of their
Eoad, and made a report thereon, from which the following ex-
tracts were taken. They say : " The Engineer states, and your
Committee confirm his statements, from personal observation, that
this Eoad for more than seventy-five miles, passes directly through
a wilderness, as remarkable for its density and extent, as any other
in this country.

" The land for ten miles on each side of the road, and for ten
miles from the margin of the lakes, is groaning under the weight
of an immense amount of most valuable freight, all of which is
wanted at tide-water as speedily as it will be in the power of the
Eoad to transport it. There is more freight on the surface now
ready for use, than could be grown upon a cultivated country in
more than half a century. The weight of lumber, etc., is about
seventy tons per acre. The average weight of products of an ag-
ricultural country does not much exceed one ton per annum per
acre."

Thus are the products of a timber domain estimated, when rail-
road facilities are afforded with which to carry its products to
market.

It is not expected that the timber land belonging to your Com-
pany will prove as profitable as that estimated by the New York
Company, nor is this estimate here introduced to promulgate such an

idea, but for the purpose of illustrating the difference in value be-
tween a timber estate without, and one with facilities for conveying
the same to market. While this is the case, the fact cannot be
controverted that your Company possesses about 500,000 acres of
timber land, which will, by the construction of your road through
it, become immediately available and largely enhanced in value ;
and if we allow that 300,000 acres, or one-third of this land, contains
only ten trees per acre, from which can be cut six logs twelve feet
long per tree, averaging twenty-four inches square, this gives 3,400
feet, b. m., per tree, and the total quantity amounts to ten thousand
millions feet of lumber, which delivered at Sacramento at, say $15
per thousand, amounts to one hundred and fifty millions of dollars;
or calling this lumber worth, standing, one dollar per thousand, it
would be worth $10,000,000 to the Company.

It is well known that the sugar pine of these lands often runs
125 feet high without a limb, and often measures eight feet through
at base — while a tree is seldom found measuring less than three
and one-half feet at base. Cut but one tree per acre per year, and
it gives an annual yield of 1,000 million feet of lumber — three mil-
lion feet per day, equal to 5,000 tons per day, or, say, 1,750,000 tons
per year.

Allowing the 500,000 acres instead, to yield fifty cords of wood
per acre (a very low estimate) and it amounts to twenty-five mil-
lion cords of wood, which, if delivered at Sacramento at $6 per
cord, would amount to 150 millions of dollars, and pay the road
about 100 millions of dollars freight.

It is well known that the supply of wood is becoming more
scanty, and is rising in value yearly.

What then may we estimate the value of this domain in years to
come, not only to the Company, as owners, but to the railroad as a
source of revenue in its transportation, and to the community, who
are obliged to use it.

Wood is now worth $18 per cord in Washoe, and in the winter
commands $4.0 per cord. In fact, the cost of hauling is so great
that not a few mills have been compelled to stop work, and are now
idle in consequence.

How difficult it is then to realize the immense value of this estate
which belongs to your Company, by absolute grant from the United
States Government, and to which you hold as title, which cannot he
disputed or disturbed.

48
EEVENUE.

In estimating the revenue of your road, it is gratifying to be
able to arrive so correctly at its probable business from statistics of
actual business, now performed over the same route, exclusively by
freight teams and stages.

It may be truly said, that no road was ever constructed or con-
templated in the United States, or elsewhere, that promised as
large and speedy a return upon investment, as the one proposed to
be constructed by you between the city of Sacramento and the
Washoe silver mining district.

The extent of the existing trade now performed over this route
by teams and stages, can be scarcely realized, except upon careful
inquiry and investigation. It is difficult to credit the statement
that over five millions of dollars per year is paid out for freight alone
to Washoe, but rigid scrutiny and investigation bears out the asser-
tion, which seems to be entirely within bounds — arid this trade is
increasing and growing every day.

Your road, when completed, from Sacramento to Washoe, will
perform —

1st. The local business of Placer, Nevada, Sierra, Plumas, and
a portion of that of El Dorado county.

2d. Over its first 25 miles, the northern business, now performed
by stages and steamboats.

3d. The entire freighting and passenger business of Washoe,
Esmeralda, Carson Yalley, Pyramid Lake and Humboldt, and a
portion of the Salt Lake business.

It is to be observed that the freighting business to the mountains
and to Washoe is now performed entirely by teams; there is no
other way of forwarding goods to the interior.

The lowest price paid for freighting to Washoe is four cents per
pound, or 680 per ton, and that only when the roads are in good
condition.

When the roads are not in good condition, or when there is a
large amount of freight offering, this price is increased to six, eight
and ten cents per pound.

A peculiarity of Washoe is, that it is situated in a section of
country so barren and sterile that nothing but a scanty supply of
vegetables can be raised there. Every thing used there to eat or

wear, all necessaries of life, as well as all manufactured goods, have
to be transported by wagons or mules. The inhabitants, therefore,
are absolutely compelled to draw their supplies of all kinds from
the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and in paying
for their supplies, to pay the additional cost of freighting by wag-
ons, at from four to ten cents per pound.

This is the business proposed to be performed by your Eailroad,
when constructed, and it is obvious that it will be entirely com-
manded by your Eoad without competition. With a Eailroad built
to Washoe, this business cannot be performed by any other means,
or in any other manner.

In addition to this large and increasing business, may be reck-
oned that of supplying lumber, timber, and logs for consumption
and for timbering the mines ; also, fuel for consumption in the cities
of Nevada Territory, and to supply the mills, a majority of which
are run by steam.

As has been previously observed, wood is worth at the present
time $18 per cord, and in the winter will be worth $40 to $50 per
cord, and many of the mills are obliged to cease running in conse-
quence.

Your railroad will supply this fuel from the timber on its own
lands, and at such a reduction in price as will enable these mills to
run through the entire year. It is a fact worthy of observation, that
the construction of this road will save to the residents of Washoe
and Nevada Territory, over $2,500,000 yearly.

In order to obtain accurate information with regard to the busi-
nees now performed over what is known as the Placerville road to
Washoe, I have stationed a trustworthy and reliable agent at
Strawberry Valley, (J. E. Atkins, Esq.,) who has taken a careful
and correct account of the travel passing that point for eight weeks,
commencing August 16, 1862, and terminating October 10, 1862, or
for a period of fifty-six days.

Every team going and returning was counted each day, and Mr.
Atkins' returns present a complete statement of the weight and
nature of each load, the number of horses, mules or oxen, of stages
and stage passengers, buggies and occupants, riders, footmen and
loose stock.

It is to be borne in mind that these are the returns on only one
road to Washoe ; the different roads are enumerated as follows :
1

Big Tree Eoad.
• Amador .Road (new road).
Placerville Eoad.
Henness Pass Eoad.

Which comprises the Nevada road, the Marysville, San Juan and
JJownieville roads, and the Sierra Valley and Beckworth's Pass
road.

A compilation of these returns is herewith presented :

ACTUAL COUNT OP TRAVEL ON THE PLACERVILLE WAGON ROAD TO
AVASHOE AND NEVADA TERRITORY FOR EIGHT WEEKS, ENDING OC-
TOBER 10, 1862.

Number of Stages bound up 169

Number of Stages bound down 171

Number of Buggies bound up 61

Number of Buggies bound down 46

Number of Stage Passengers up 1,287

Number of Stage Passengers down 785

Number of Travelers, other than Stage passengers, up —

riders, footmen and in buggies, (including emigrants).. 1,288

Number of Travelers, etc., down 2,508

Loose stock, of all kinds, up 578

Loose stock of all kinds, down 434

Number of Teams bound up , 4,142

Number of teams bound down 4,464

Number of Animals in teams, up 22,728

Number of Animals in teams, down , 22,803

Number of pounds of Freight, up 19,386,200

Number of pounds of Freight, down

Teamsters are not included in the above return.

RECAPITULATION.

No. of Stages

No. of Buggies

No. of Stage Passengers
No. Travelers, Footmen,

and in Buggies

No. loose stock, all kindi

No. of Teams

No. of animals in teams.
No. pounds of Freight...
No. tons of 2,000 lbs

FOR ]

3IGHT WEEKS.

FOB

ONE DAT.

UP.

DOWN.

TOTAL.

UP.

DOWN. | TOTAL.

169

171

340

3 6

107

1.287

785

2,072

1,287

2,508

3,79t

573

434

1,007

4,142

4,464

8,60b

154

22,788

22,003

45,591!

407

814

19,286,200

20,000,000;

346,185

357,000

9,683

10,000j

173

178

From which it appears that the daily average of loaded teams

bound up is 74

The number of tons of freight transported daily up is 178

The number of stage passengers both ways is 37

The total number of travelers, including stage passengers 105

Allowing 18 days as the average time of a trip, and the number
of teams and teamsters employed, amounts to 2,772, and of ani-
mals, 14,652.

At the present date, Oct. 22, 1862, the price of freight is seven
to eight cents per pound.

Estimating the yearly average of freight over the Placerville
road to be 120 tons per day, at an average price of six cents per pound,
and the total amount paid for freight alone, amounts to $5,256,000 up-
on this one road.

A four horse or mule team, which makes the trip in about sixteen
days, pays for tolls $22 75 ; a six horse or mule team pays $30 tolls.
Averaging the time at eighteen days, the tolls at $25 per trip, and
Ave find that the enormous sum of $693,000 per year year is paid
for tolls by freight teams.

The returns show that the stages average 37 passengers per day,
which, at $30 per passenger, amounts to $405,150. It is believed,
however, that the total receipts of the stage line exceeds this sum.

It will be observed that 68 additional travelers per day, or nearly
double the number carried by stage, pass over this road, at least
one half of whom would probably take the cars, were a Railroad
completed.

From an entirely reliable source, I have ascertained that the to-
tal amount of silver bullion brought down by Wells, Fargo's Ex-
press, for the ten months of 1862, is over 150,000 pounds, and may
be safely stated at 200,000 pounds for the entire year.

Its value is not, of course, known, gold being mixed with it, but
it is safe to estimate it at $30 per pound, or a total value of
$6,000,000.

This is only what comes by Express, and does not indicate the
amount actually taken out, and retained there, or sent down by
private conveyance.

It is estimated by "Wells, Fargo & Co., that this amount will be
doubled for the year 1863, and in 1866, reach twenty -five millions
of dollars.

It would, perhaps, be proper, therefore, to assume that, upon

the completion of your road, at a charge of one per cent., an addi-
tional revenue of at least $200,000 per year would be derived from
this source.

ESTIMATED ANNUAL EECEIPTS OF EOAD IN CALI-

FOENIA„

PASSENGERS IN CALIFORNIA.

10 Eanch passengers, per day, each way.

10 Lincoln " " "

30 Placer Co. " «

30 Nevada Co. " "

40 Marysville and North " «

120 total, each way.
240 total both ways, or

75,120 yearly Lincoln passengers @ $2 $150,240

10.000 way passengers beyond @ $5 50,000

Gives as total receipts from passengers $200,240

FREIGHT IN CALIFORNIA.

25 tons ranch freight.

20 tons Lincoln freight.

50 tons Placer County freight.

75 tons Nevada County freight.

75 tons JMarysville and North freight.

245 tons freight per day.

82,000 tons per year, to Lincoln, @ $2 50 $210,000

22,000 tons per year, to points beyond, @ $5 110,000

25,000 tons return freight, cobble and stone, @ $1 25,000

50,000 cords wood, @ $2 100,000

18,250 m feet of Lumber, @ $5 91,250

Total receipts from freight, $536,250

Add Passengers, 200,240

Gives as total receipts, $736,490

ESTIMATE OF ANNUAL .RECEIPTS FEOM WASHOE BUS-
INESS.

On 160 miles of Railroad completed from Sacramento to Stone's Gros-
sing of Truckee River, or Virginia Station, from statistics of
Placerville Route as a basis.

WASHOE BUSINESS.

43,800 tons up freight, @ 2 cents per pound, $1,752,000

30,000 tons down freight, @ 1 cent per pouud 600,000

25,550 passengers, @ $15 „. 383,250

50,000 cords wood, @ $5 250,000

18,250 m feet Lumber, @ $10 182,500

Express, Mails, etc., 50,000

Total receipts, as per statistics of Placerville road, $3,217,750

Add 25 per cent, from passengers and freight from other-
wards, 700,000

Total receipts of Washoe business, $3,917,750

Add receipts for local California trade, 736,490

Gives as total receipts of road $4,654,240

Deduct all expenses of operating road, repairs, taxes, etc. 1,000,000

Leaves, as net revenue, $3,654 240

Which is equivalent to an annual net profit of 25 per cent, upon
a cost of fifteen millions of dollars, or monthly returns of two per
cent, per month.

Upon completing the first division of fifty miles, your road will
perform, in addition to the local business of Placer, Nevada, Sierra
and Plumas counties, and the Marysville and northern business, a
greater portion of the present Washoe business over such division of
fifty miles.

In addition, therefore, to the estimated receipts from California
business, it will be proper to add as follows :

WASHOE BUSINESS ON FIRST FIFTY MILES.

30,000 tons freight, @ $5 $150,000

15,000 passengers, @ $3 45,000

Mails and express , 15,000

Total $210,000

Add total California receipts, less $80,000, estimated for

points beyond Lincoln $656,490

Gives as total receipts, fifty miles $866,490

Deduct all expenses, operating, etc 150,000

Gives as net profits $716,490

Or an annual net profit of twenty-four per cent., or monthly re-
turn of two per cent, per month.

That these results appear large is true, but it is no less true that
the conditions which produce these results are extraordinary, and
unlike those which govern the business conditions of any other .Rail-
road ever built, with one exception, viz : the Panama road.

The charge for transporting a ton of freight over a Railroad 160
miles long in the Atlantic States, would be from four to five dol-
lars— say five dollars.

As has been previously observed, the lowest rates for freight over
the line of your road by wagons, are $80 per ton ; while the aver-
age cost by wagon is over $100 per ton.

A reduction in price to $40 per ton by Railroad, and a saving in
time from nine days to one day, would give satisfaction to both
merchants and consumers, and secure every pound of Washoe
freight over your road. The receipts being at least eight times
those of a Railroad in the Atlantic States performing the same
business — while tbe expenses of operating your road will not be in
the same proportion.

Statistics of Railroad operations, show the cost of fuel to be a
prominent item in the cost of operating Railroads, and this feature
is nowhere more clearly shown than in a comparison of the differ-
ence in cost of operating the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the
New York Central Railroad, to roads of about equal length. The
first named road using coal procured from the line of their road at
cheap cost, while the latter is compelled to supply itself with fuel
at what may be considered a high price.

The cost of fuel upon the line of your road will be simply the cost
of cutting it, which can be contracted for to any extent at not over
one dollar per cord — and the supply may be considered, for all
practicable purposes of your road, as inexhaustible. It is to be re-
membered, however, that the supply of fuel for operating the Pa-
cific Railroad as far east as Salt Lake, will have to come from the

Sierra Nevadas, and in all probability from your lands. It is a
source of congratulation, therefore, that you are so liberally pro.
vided with that article most neeeded in the future, and in fact ab-
solutely essential in conducting the future operations of the road
with economy.

It has been stated that the cost of operating roads, having heavy
grades' and high summits, is greater than upon valley roads, and
that this argument applies to your road. This is, in a measure,
true ; but an analysis which resolves the elements of this increased
cost, will prove that it is mainly owing to the necessity of employ-
ing greater locomotive power with which to overcome these grades
and summits, equivalent to the use of more steam, or, in other words,
more fuel. Therefore, it may be fairly stated, and can scarcely be
denied, that' this objection does not apply with its usual force to
your road.

EETUE^" FEEIGHTS OF SILYEE OEE.

Without entering into the details of this subject, it may perhaps
be sufficient to say that the business of carrying return freights of
low grades of silver ore for foreign shipment at San Francisco, can
be made a profitable business to the road.

The following extract is taken from the communication of a firm
in San Francisco (date of Xovember 4, 1860, or a year ago,) who
were conversant with that branch of business, and who were at
the time supplied with foreign capital for this very purpose. They
say:

" There are now, probably, forty to fifty mining claims being
worked, from which not less than two hundred tons of ore are
being taken out daily, that would warrant shipment at a low rate.
There are four first class mines, viz : the Ophir, Mexican, Central,
and Grould and Curry, that alone are capable of turning out that
quantity of ore, of sufficient value to warrant transportation by
Eailroad to this place for shipment.

It is only necessary to furnish facilities for cheap transportation,
to insure the opening and working of hundreds of rich claims, ca-
pable of turning out an almost incredible quantity of ore, every
ton of which would meet with ready sale on its delivery at either
terminus of the road. It is a safe calculation to estimate that five
hundred tons of ore daily, would be sent over such a road, at a rate
of freight not exceeding say §25 per ton. In fact, the only limit to
the quantity would, perhaps, be the inability of the road to do the
business offered.

There are, at the present time, a number of agencies of eastern
and foreign capital, armed with authority and means to purchase,
at remunerative prices to the producer,. ores of any grade, from
$100 per ton and upward ; but, owing to the limited quantity ar-
riving, have not been able to purchase a fraction of the orders in
hand. It is difficult to*ay what would be the limit to the amount
of capital seeking investment in this channel. It is safe to say
that five thousand tons of ore could be sold for cash, at this moment,
if it could be had.

In regard to the benefit to the State and cities of California,
that would arise from the enterprise proposed by you, it is almost
impossible to calculate its extent. That it would make it the rich-
est and most prosperous State in the Union, there is not a doubt.
This new resource of wealth is unbounded, and the only obstacle
to its realization, is that which your project will most certainly

The capacity of your road for the performance of a business of
this kind, may be estimated by a comparison with that of sim-
ilar roads.

The Mine Hill and Schuylkill Haven Eailroad of Pennsylvania,
possesses grades of two hundred and fifty feet per mile. The ton-
nage of coal over this road, which (it is to be borne in mind) is one
way, was as follows :

For 1855 1,534,876

For 1856 1,614,887

For 1857 1,564,119

For 1858 1,452,083

Or an average of about five hundred tons per day.

DESCENDING GRADES FOR RETURN FREIGHT.

It will be remembered upon your road the up grades are princi-
pally ascending eastwardly, while the return loads are carried
mostly on down grades. Its capacity, then, for return business, is
not to be judged by the character of its ascending grades.

Trusting that the above report may serve to explain the perma-
nent features of this enterprise, and soliciting your indulgence
towards any imperfections or omissions it may contain, arising
from want of time and unavoidable interruptions,
I am, very respectfully,

THEODOEE D. JUDAH;
Chief Engineer C P. B. B. Co. of California.

THE HIGHER BEACHES

THE GREAT

CONTINENTAL RAILWAY:

A HIGHWAY FOE QUE GOD.

A- Sermon PreacM in tie Congregational CMrcli. Sacramento.

HVCA^ST 9, 1869.

By Rev. 3h'E. DWINELL, D. D.
ON THE COMPLETION OF THE OVERLAND RAILWAY.

SACRAMENTO :

H. 8. CROCKER & CO., STEAM PRINTERS AND STATIONERS
1869.

A SEEMON,

Preached in the Congregational Church, Sacramento, May 9th, 1869,
by Rev. I. E. Dwinell, D. D., on the Completion of the Overland
Railway.

Isaiah, 40: 3-5.—" Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway
for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low
and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord
shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together : for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken
it."

This is my text, and furnishes my theme. By way of verbal
correspondence and suggestiveness, without implying that the
words were designed to describe railroads, I add, also, the fol-
lowing from

Nahum, 2: 3-4.—" The chariots shall be with flaming torches in the day of his preparation
and the fir trees shall be terribly shaken. The chariots shall rage in the streets ; they shall
jostle one against another in the broad ways ; they shall seem like torches; they shall run like
the lightnings."

It is fitting, my brethren, on the completion of the great
continental line of railroad, to bring the subject into the house
of God, lift it up into the light of its relation to the kingdom
of God, and make it a topic of devout acknowledgment and
thanksgiving. It is one of the signal special gifts of Provi-
dence to this side of the continent. The boon falls especially
into the lap of California. Sacramento brooded over the enter-
prise and gave it life, and it comes back with its blessings first
to her. And of the leading spirits, by whose reach of brain-
work, diplomacy, financial skill, varied and wide and remote
combinations, and, above all, by whose sleepless, fiery energy,
the work of the Central Pacific road has been done, all have

[2 ]

been our friends and neighbors, and most of them have cbanced
to be connected with this congregation. Surely, if God's hand
should be acknowledged in all this by any one, it should be by
us. Sacramento, my friends, has reason to congratulate herself
and feel grateful for the position she holds in the history of this
great continental railway, uniting ocean to ocean. A small
citj7", reduced by fires and floods to a population of not more
twelve thousand, she furnished the men who led off on this diz-
zy idea in practical ways, and the continent followed. The
" Central Pacific Railroad Company " filed their certificate of
incoi'poration June 28th, 1861, under a California State law.
This was followed by the Act of Congress signed July 1st, 1862,
incorporating "The Union Pacific Railroad Company," and be-
stowing the same grants and franchises upon the Central Pacific,
designing the two to connect and be one continuous route. The
Central Pacific broke ground January 8th, 1863 ; the Union
Pacific on the 2d of December following — the one at Saci-a-
mento, the other at Omaha. Prom that time, with the construc-
tive genius of the western side of the continent and the con-
structive genius of the eastern side taking sight at ea'ch other,
we have had high hopes, and we and the country and the world
have looked on with admiration. This feeling has latterly been
intensified to a pitch of excitement, as we saw the two running
a race of railroad construction towards each other for the point
of greatest advance, — striding across plains, struggling through
valleys, pushing hills right and left, laying their hands of iron
on the icy mane of mountains, and springing over, grinding ob-
structions of rock and earth to powder and tossing them in the
air, accompanied by a noisy retinue of tongues and brogues and
a wild commotion of nature, and gaining at last such momentum
that they shoot one hundred and twent}r miles past each other
before stopping. Our hopes have not been hopes deferred, but
hopes anticipated. The blessing has come before we expected it.

[3]

The Atlantic is upon us, and we can hardly realize it. With
incredible speed, marvelous beyond any recoi'd in history — one
of the great marvels to go down into coming history, this road
has been thrown across the country against the direction of the
geographical planes and inclines. It has cut the general geo-
logical configuration and facilities at right angles. It has
pierced through mountains and swum rivers, to unite oceans
that nature had elbowed apart and held apart by a series of
rocky wedges. It has met and silenced all objections and diffi-
culties. " No engine can climb the bold front of the Sierra
Nevadas;" the track was laid and long trains glide to the
summit. "Mountain ridges of granite or porphyry are in the
way;" nitro-glycerine blew holes through them. " The snow
falls from fifteen to twenty feet deep for scores of miles within the
snow-belt;" the track is covered with sheds and the snow-plow
does the rest "There are land-slides;" engineering and
masonry escape them. "Men eannot work on the alkali flats
and deserts where there is no water ; " cars are converted to a
moveable aqueduct, sent to the end of the track, and the water
carted thence to the front, at an expense equal to half the cost
of grading. "The Indians will molest the road;" Indians have
no desire to steal the iron horse or to sharpen their arrows with
the rails. And the fundamental question of finance, which
frightened off most of the capitalists of the State, was accepted
by a few bold men, of special previous training in moral cour-
age, who had faith in their ability to build the road on the
means made availablej with a margin; and who went forward,
abandoned by others, alone and in their own name and built it,
and have not lacked the means, nor the margin ; and they have
earned and deserved their reward.

But it is time to lift up this subject to the range of its higher
aspects and relations. The passage of Scripture which I have
taken as my leading text is a prophecy announcing the principle

[4]

that in the coming era lower agencies and instrumentalities
should be employed to prepare the way for the kingdom of God
and introduce it. According to Matthew and Luke, the preach-
ing of John the Baptist was a signal illustration of this princi-
ple ; but this does not limit its application to that case. All the
lower teachings and schoolings of the race introduced by Divine
Providence, all its gifts and blessings to man, all the great im-
provements and discoveries which are reckoned as signals of
human progress, have a reach in the Divine intent beyond them-
selves, and are designed to illustrate this principle and reach
over into the kingdom of God. Looking at the subject, there-
fore, in its higher significance, we see that whenever a provi-
dential call goes forth to build across the continent a railroad,
it means literally : " Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make
straight in the desert a high way for our God * * and the glory
of the Lord shall be revealed." Discoveries, inventions, im-
provements, are taken up in the Divine plan as means to a
spiritual end. They do not come till they are wanted, or where
they are not wanted; and then they render a service in the
higher direction. The compass came when God was ready to
have the ocean traversed and had a people ready to traverse it ;
printing, when the Bible was unbound, and the human mind, and
when the world was prepared to be benefited by it, and needed
some more rapid means of communicating thought ; machinery,
when brain was worth more than muscle and could be put to
higher service; the era of steamboats, railroads and telegraphs,
when intercourse — commerce — fraternity,. was a more hopeful
condition of society than isolation. We must see a Divine
adaptation and harmony in all this — a fitting together of means
and ends, a playing of material instrumentalities over into the
objects of the spiritual kingdom. Not a railroad is swung by
God into its orbit, that he does not put to work on this upward
mission. It has its unseen beats and connections. It has its

[5]
merchandise, consignments, depots, of a heavenly commerce.
We may see only barrels and boxes and bales — swift freights and
passages— easy access to markets and quick returns, and neigh-
borly interchanges with the old homes; a deeper insight is
occupied with the interplay of ideas, principles, the elements
and forces of a higher civilization. In the Divine economy it
does not exist for the lower objects, but the higher, — for the
invisible connections, — for the coming glory, — for the way in
which it facilitates the transmission of the material that is to
be put into the temple not made with hands. We, short-sighted,
earthly mortals, build railroads for one purpose ; G-od, for quite
another.

I do not feel myself bound to decipher or explain the exact
Divine intent of every line of railroad, to justify this faith.
Nay, nay; we may have the faith, and it may be sound and true,
taking hold of a principle of the Divine administration, and yet
we may fail in the application of it. We live, as it were, in the
dawn and blush of the era of railroads ; and it may take cen-
turies to round out the full interpretation of them to the slow
intelligence of man. Meanwhile, it is something to know they
have a meaning and form a track with reaches in some way
over into the invisible kingdom; and while this meaning is
something grander, nobler, than we can yet wholly grasp, we
can catch hints, glimpses, that are of great promise.

I think we must all feel that the mission of railroads is some-
where in the general direction of human peace, fraternity, unity.
They cannot be worked, cannot exist, in the breaking up and
disintegration of society. Their mission implies union and
points to union. Clearly these iron bonds which bind States,
and in some cases nations together, hint a higher and warmer
and purer brotherhood of mankind, and a snugger home-feeling
beneath our common father's roof, for the race.

As the subjugation of the civilized world to Roman arms and

[6]

Grecian letters and the decay of their pagan religions prepared
the way for Christianity, and at its advent the whole world
stood in the attitude of expectancy, reaching out its arras for
some coming good; and as the opening of coal mines was a
Divine signal of a coming manufacturing age, as this is, I
believe, of a still future intellectual and spiritual age; just so
the age of railroads and telegraphs — the one a swift hand, the
other a swift brain, for the coming genius of humanity — implies
that a new phase of civilization is in preparation, a new style
of human life, a new dispensation of love and fraternity. It may
require centuries for this flower to ripen aud display its fruits ;
but I cannot doubt that in time men will see that a wonderful
change in the spiritual history of mankind dates from the rail-
road age, and that this change will be in the direction I have
indicated We begin to see it already, not only in the fact that
civilized man is now a traveler, — the roots which formerly
attached him to the ground having been metamorphosed to
nimble feet, and the population of all countries being in a fer-
ment of locomotion, — but also in the enlarged and changed
tastes corresponding to this state of things. We see it in the
easy interchange of nationalities, by which the people of differ-
ent countries mix and fuse together. We see it in the breaking
down of national barriers, prejudices, peculiarities, and the
gradual shading up of national characteristics towards some
new common type. We see it in the creation of a higher ideal
of human brotherhood, binding the nations together, authorita-
tive and sovereign, to which they separately bow and to the
interests of which they must be true, — a fact beginning to be
recognized in diplomacy and international law, and in accord-
ance with which a nation is now beginning to be held responsible
for its influence, its reciprocities, as well as its overt acts.
Above all, we see it in the missionary and evangelizing enter-
prises which are flashing like lines of light to the ends of the

[7]

earth, drawing the most distant and alienated peoples into the
actual and felt relations of a living brotherhood. We have as
yet, however, but the bud. The opening of the flower, the
ripening of the fruit is in reserve.

.Now, in the light of this expectation, consider the remark-
able location of this highway. Tou observe it lies directly in
the line of the great thoroughfare of swift trade and travel which
girdles the earth. From New York to Liverpool, steam; from
Liverpool to Marseilles, rail; from Marseilles to Alexandria,
steam ; from Alexandria to Suez, rail ; from Suez to Hong Kong,
Yokohama and San Francisco, steam; and now rail — the last
great gift of Providence, the theme of our joy and thanksgiving
— from San Francisco to New York; this fills the gap, and per-
mits the fast coursers of civilization to run around the globe on
a prepared track. And mark the nations that are strung along
this line. They are leading nations, the light-bearers, of the
world. This line, with the attached and pendant nations, is a
necklace of pearls which God has thrown around the neck of his
daughter Earth. The wealth, the beauty, the glory of the
world, for the higher uses of mankind, lie along this sparkling
line. Within this zone really beats the world's heart, and there
are formed and sent abroad the vital currents which-carry heal-
ing and life and vigor elsewhere. Run your eye round the
circle. There is England — a mighty aggressive force in civiliza-
tion, with a small homestead but vast territorial acquisitions
abroad — a banyan-tree having a slender central stock but send-
ing out its branches and inserting them all over the earth.
There is France, the queen of the race in the form, fashion,
finesse, of civilization. There are the other nations of Europe,
all of which have their connections with this circle, great in
lettei-s, science, art, arms. There is the wonder-land of Egypt ;
India, with the highest intellectual bloom of Brahmanism cross-
ed with interest in practical affairs from English supremacy;

[8]
China and Japan, the most vigorous, constructive and solid of all
the pagan nations. And now, fairly and fully on the same line,
the circle of swift communication passing through its center,
here is America completing the round, — America, with more in-
fluence in the world in settling the problem of government and
defining the status of the individual, giving him his rights and
arousing him to his duties, than any other nation, — America,
that takes the torch of civilization more immediately from God's
hand, and bears it higher, brighter, diviner, than any other.

Now, as it is this zone of powers, the hopeful and mighty
powers of the earth, that is banded together by the continuous
line of rapid transit, who can fail to see the design that they
should have a greatly accelerated preponderant influence over
the world's history? The shuttle which flashes incessantly
back and forth along this line, is destined to weave rapidly the
web of destiny for mankind ; not only this, but to weave it of
the best materials the world has to put into it, in the best figures
also, and of the best colors. These elect nations, having all the
vigor of the temperate zone, the purest Christianity, and the
highest culture, will thus diffuse and multiply their ideas and
principles, their civilization and their religion, till they fill the
earth. The old barbarisms and religions will flee, shrink, shrivel
away rapidly. What significance there is thus in this line of
swift transit, now completed. It is a line for the diffusion of
the best ideas, the divinest ideas, on the earth, over the earth.
It is a line by means of which the world's best learning, culture,
humanity, are to steal an invisible march on the spent forms of
society under which the decrepit nations languish. It is a line
which will be more attractive to celestial eyes for the spiritual
commerce which will grace it, than for the material. It is to be
a " highway for our God." Thi'ow, however, a rail and steam
line around the globe anywhere in the southern hemisphere,
and there would be no such significance to it. Things are not

[9]
ripe for it there; there is no such harmony of relations and
preparation for it there; Grod has not yet in readiness there the
higher ideas and principles, — germs of better things, seeds of
human good, — to furnish the spiritual freights over such a course.
It would be out of time, out of relation, without Divine call.

We see, thus, the important place which this continental line
of railway holds among the instrumentalities for the elevation
of man. It is a grand section of the axis on which the destiny
of the world turns, a part of the new center of revolution about
which the reconstruction of humanity revolves.

Iflot less significant of higher meaning is the selected place of

transit, where the railway crosses this continent. Tou observe,

my brethren, that it has been located, as by Divine plan, just

where it will intercept and bring in upon us the best civilization

of our laud, and thus transport most of the commodities in
/
which God delights and for which he governs nations. It

extends thx-ough that section of our couutry most devoted to
learning, art, science, philanthropy, the rights and elevation of
man, religion, missions, on the eastern side of the continent;
then strikes the great unoccupied, or sparsely settled, central
plateaus, and continues on to the most promising region on the
Pacific slope, and there opens and pours out its stores, the seeds
and quickening influences of the same high civilization, to be
scattered and diffused, north and south, east and west, all over
the coast. What a mercy in all this! What a blessing to have
this great artery, coming directly from the moral and spiritual
heart of the country, open and branch out here, sending the
best national life and vigor over the western side of the con-
tinent !

In the conflict of civilizations which tore our beloved country
when this enterprise was first agitated, this was seen and dreaded
in the South, and from that quarter came the greatest opposition
to the measure. ISTow that there is happily no conflict of civili-

[ 10]

zations, there can be but one mind about the significance and
preciousness of the fact that Providence has located the road
where it will bring us in close contact with the fountain and
head of the prevailing type of civilization. If this line, now a
line of light and life, were drawn eight or ten degrees farther
south, across the continent, how, with respect to higher interests,
it would dwindle and fade ! How it would delay the progress of
humanity! How, in comparison, enterprise, and schools, and
churches would languish ! As it is, we shall see on this western
part of the necklace of pearls, of which 1 have spoken, rapidly
taking their place on the string, one after another, new pearls, a
series of settlements, towns, villages, cities, springing States, of
the true American type, with its symbols — the church and
schoolhouse ; and the same type of civilization folloAving the
various railroad pendants which will drop down from the main
line into the valleys.

Besides this genial bearing of the road on the higher interests
of civilization on this side of the continent, it gives promise of
specific effects of great value.

It will keep us here in California from that dwarfing tendency
which sooner or later overtakes an isolated people remote from
the great centers of the world's thought and life. The best
blood, bred in, degenerates; the best seed, unchanged, unmixed,
in the end runs out. In the old days, the second and third gen-
erations of noble colonies had a sorrowful time. Steam retards
the downward tendency. The rail arrests it — we may hope.
Especially we need to have it bring us, as it is likely to do, where
the air of the universities and seats of leaning will touch our
cheeks, and our hearts will feel the throb and pressure of spirit-
ual things There is the hope of twenty-five or fifty years
growth in the closer play which spiritual forces will now have
upon us. We have as intense materialism as any they have in the
East, and this quite general here, but it is too small an element

[11]

numerically to produce any disastrous result by the interplay
there, so this evil will not be increased; while we shall be
brought so much nearer the inspiring and guiding centers of
letters aRd religion, professional study and art.

Another result, of no small moment, in what I may call the
fluid condition of American society, will be the strengthening of
domestic ties between the members of separated families, some
of whom are here and others in the Eastern States. Whatever
the statesman or writer in political economy may think of the
value of these ties, the discerning moralist sees in them, in their
free interplay and feeling of neighborhood, one of the strongest
guarantees and incentives of virtue. Many a father, brother,
son, with those he loved three months, six weeks, four weeks
distant — too far away to feel their influence, to perceive the
moisture in their eye, to hear the flutter of their hearts — has
gone down into the dark depths, who would have been still a
virtuous, useful and happy man, if, at short intervals, a warm
letter, only seven clays old, could have kept the home feeling
strong in his heart.

If this is all so, it follows, as a matter of course, that the mul-
tiplying and gathering together of these many individual and
social bonds will greatly strengthen and solidify the nation. The
iron rails are only a weak symbol of the spiritual bonds which
will thus be called into existence, binding our country together
from ocean to ocean. These subtle influences become in the
end and the aggregate powerful. Seward says, in a letter to
General John A. Dix, on breaking ground on the Union Pacific
road at Omaha : When that road shall have been extended to
the Pacific ocean " disunion will be rendered forever afterward
impossible. There will be no fulcrum for the lever of treason
to rest upon." We lay rails, God intensifies and secures the
national unity and life.

These I regard, my friends, as some of the outlooks of this

[ 12 ]

enterprise towards a better future. But let us not suppose,
though it reveals a Divine adjustment and a Divine intent
though it is designed to " make straight in the desert a highway
for our God," exalting every valley, laying low every hill and
mountain, and making the crooked straight and the rough places
plain, that the glory of the Lord may be revealed; let us not
suppose from this, that that intent will fulfill itself in any other
way ihan by the use men shall make of the road. They may
make a bad use of it, and put far off the promised good. These
iron rails are, by no necessity, a celestial railroad, they are not
themselves laid into the millennium ; they may be* an infernal
road — a regular " Black Yalley Railroad " — and will be, if men
neglect the Divine opportunity and call, and use it for such pur-
poses. And it is noticeable that saloon civilization, in a new
country, is the first to follow railroads and occupy the ground;
Bible civilization, not being ill at ease in its old haunts, not
being crowded out, is slower, but where men are true it silently
gains the ascendancy. Let us, therefore, individually, let good
men everywhere, work and pray, and exert such influence as we
can, that this road, the crowning internal improvement of the
age, may have the largest possible freight of Divine ideas and
principles, and make the largest contribution to the elevation of
man and the coming of the kingdom of God.

To the Officers and Directors I would say, not with the
presumption of a private citizen, but as a minister of God, im-
pelled by the higher reaches and claims of my subject : God has
given you great honor, historical renown, the privilege of build-
ing and controlling a work which has sublime connections with
the revelation of his glory : do your part, in all your arrange-
ments, combinations, policies, movements, so as not to delay for
a single hour the early coming of that blessing. See the mission
of the road, the Divine intent and call; meet the grand oppor-
tunity, and so help to make it in truth " a highway for our God."

[13]

Let me specify two particulars : As the Lord's day comes, let
your trains, your men, have rest; let your road, depots, offices,
proclaim to the intense, excited, worldly population all over this
coast : "This is the Sabbath, honor ye God." And so make it a
highway for our God. And entrust no engine, no car, no break,
no switch, no depot, no construction of trains, no signaling, no
guarding or repairing of the track — nothing on which hundreds
or thousands of human lives may depend — to a man whose brain
is not always cool, and his judgment clear and steady by free-
dom from strong drink, and so make it a " highway for our
God."

And now, may Divine grace and mercy, Divine Providence,
take this completed road — a bond between the two great oceans,
a large section of the swift circle which surrounds the earth — and
make it always, and everywhere, " a highway," along which " the
glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it
together."

PEATEE

At the celebration of the completion of the Central Pacific
Railroad at Sacramento, May 8tb, 1869, the following was the
prayer of the Chaplain, Rev. J. A. Benton :

Almighty and eternal God ! who hast flung suns and systems
into space, and hung our world amid the stars of light, Thee we
worship and adore; in Thy being and person we rejoice, as the
high and might}7 Ruler of the universe which Thou hast made.
Thy providence is continually in force among all Thy works
and Thy creatures Thou makest Thy pavilion round about the
dark waters and thick clouds of the sky; Thou ridest on the
wings of the wind; Thou hast Thy way in the sea, and Thy
path in the great waters; Thou buildest continents and islands;
Thou scoopest valleys; Thou settest fast the mountains, being
girded with power; Thou scatterest the hoar frost like
ashes; Thou castest forth Thine ice like morsels; Thou
givest snow like wool; Thou sendest forth Thy word and
meltest them; Thou causcst the wind to blow, and the waters
flow; Thou coverest the heavens with clouds; Thou preparest
rain for the earth ; Thou makest grass to grow upon the moun-
tains! Great is the Lord, our God! His understanding is in-
finite; He sendeth forth his commandments upon the earth ;
His word runneth very swiftly.

Thou, 0 Lord, art He " that canst bind the sweet influences
of Pleiades, and loose the bands of Orion ; Thou sendest light-
nings that they may go and say unto Thee ' Here we are ; '
Thou hast put wisdom in the inward hearts, and thou hast given
understanding to the heart; " Thou didst create man in Thine
own image, and didst give him dominion over all Thy works.
From age to age Thou hast led him to discovery, and inspired
him with the knowledge of witty inventions. After centuries
of human progress, we who now live have come upon the
globe into the midst of an advanced and Christian civilization.

[ 15 ]

We have entered into the labors of the great and good of all
the generations of men. The lines have fallen to us in pleas-
ant places ; yea, we have a goodly heritage. We enjoy the
manifold triumphs of art, science, skill, industry, wealth, enter-
prise and power.

We are met this day, O God, under the favoring smile of Thy
providence to celebrate one of the grand achievements of our
time. With the general acclaim of this great multitude, we give
Thee thanks for the wonderful work which thou hast enabled
Thy servants to accomplish. We bless Thy holy name for the
many successes and abundant triumphs accorded to those who,
on this spot, a few years ago, inaugurated the greatest enter-
prise of our age. We bless Thee for the concurring aid and
generous encouragement of the Government and people of this
free Nation, of this young State, and these enlightened com-
munities. And while we joy with all who rejoice over this
vast achievement, and indulge in pleasing visions of the years
of fruition, which now begin, help us devoutly to acknowledge
our dependence on Thee, and to trust humbly in Thy goodness,
grace and love.

In these days, and among us, Thou, Eternal God, hast
caused to be fulfilled again, in another form, the prophetic
mandate of old : " Prepare ye the way of the Lord ; make
straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley
shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made
low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough
places plain. Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way;, take
up the stumbling block out of the way of my people.'' And
across the breadth of this continent it shall come to pass "that
the chaiiots shall be with flaming torches, and the fir trees
shall be terribly shaken; the chariots shall rage in the streets;
thejT shall jostle one against another in the broad ways; they
shall seem like torches; they shall run like the lightnings."

We are glad, before Thee, that the remotest parts of the
land are tied together with bands of iron, over which the
waves of the world's great oceans may murmur to each other
that " the way of the Kings of the East has been thus pre-
pared," at length; that a new track for the world's travel and
commerce has been opened; that the facilities of intercourse

[16]

with this our Pacific empire have been suddenly and surpri-
singly enlarged ; that a way of easy and rapid transit to the
scenes of our early years has been opened; that our long iso-
lation from many of the older seats of life, culture, and power,
has ended ; and that the prayers and toils of eventful and
wearing years have been rewarded m this glorious consumma-
tion.

Be pleased, we entreat Thee, O Lord, to make this great
highway of our nation, and of all nations, a great blessing to
our national Union, to this State, and to these communities.
Over these rails of commerce, roll Thou, also, the car of Tlvy
salvation. Speed the coming of the kingdom of Thy Son; and
hasten the day of the redemption of all mankind. May all the
affairs of this great railway be administered wisely and honor-
ably, in the spirit of justice and benevolence. Smile Thou upon
the officers and members of this now powerful corporation.
May all of them have a fitting sense of the great responsibilities
they bear. May they all seek that wisdom from G-od which is
profitable to direct. And may they all be crowned with Thy
goodness in this life, and with the reward of well doing in the
life to come.

Bestow now Thy blessing on us, and on all this assembly;
may the exercises and festivities of the occasion be pleasing
profitable and memorable. May all go hence to a sweeter and
more faithful discharge of the duties of their various callings
and stations. May all now praise Thee, and go hence praising
Thee.

For this event, for this day, and for this scene, we call upon
our souls and all that is within us to praise Thy glorious name,
O G-od ! "We call upon the people of our coast to praise Thee.
We call upon them that dwell in every land to praise the Lord.
"Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps; fire
and hail ; snow and vapor ; stormy wind, fulfilling his word ;
mountains and all hills ; fruitful trees and all cedars ; beasts and
all cattle; creeping things and flying fowl; Kings of the earth
and all people; Princes and all Judges of the earth ; both young
men and maidens ; old men and children ; let them praise the
name of the Lord, for His name alone is excellent; His glory is
above the earth and heaven. Praise Him for His mighty acts;

[ 17]

praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Let every-
thing that hath breath praise the Lord !" "Now, unto the King
eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, our Savior, be
glory everlasting ! Through Jesus Christ, the Redeemer. Amen,
and Amen !"

ODE.

At the conclusion of the prayer, the following ode, written
by Lauren B. Crane, was sung to the music of " America/' lai'gc
numbers of the audience joining in singing :

Through toil-built mountain gates,
We come, 0 Sister States !

With hymns of praise ;
Where white Sierras rise,
Where green plains face the skies,
We grasp the victor's prize,

To crown our days !

The wild, grand march is done !
The guarded ways are won

From sea to sea !
We see His mighty Hand
Now clasp this iron band
To grace our matchless land,

Where all is free !

Glad be the song we sing !
Columbia's Harp we string

With iron chords ;
Swift shall grand music sweep
Round thrones beyond the deep,
Till tyrants kneel and weep,

Or grasp their swords !

Our Nation, pure and free,
Give thanks, 0 God, to Thee,

[ 18 J

For wisdom taught !
Wo grim war-harness mars7
Not one slave fetter scars
These iron music hars

Her sons have wrought I

POEM.

The Reader of the Poem, Albert Hart, was then introduced
and read in spirited manner and with fine effect, the subjoined
poem, likewise from the pen of L. E. Crane :

Let paeans sound from metal throats I

Ring out, keen bells, defiant !
We may not seek for sweeter notes

To greet our belted giant,
Nor may wre look for fitter place

To clasp at last the woven monster,
Than here, where in its new, dark days,

A brave young State stood sponsor !

Not strange the act ; by magic wrought

From chaos into splendor,
She felt the vigor and the thought

Her living sons could render;
She knew that men who trampled down

The prison wilds and deeps around her,
Might dare to build this iron crown

Above the Gold that crowned her.

O, weary were the early days,

When heroes bravely bore them
In toilsome march, through unknown ways,

Where dangers lay before them;
13 ut all the discord that they knew

Was fitful prelude to the thunder

[ 19 1

Of this grand anthem to the true,
A world now hears with wonder.

Where mountain wilds and desert plain

Once saw their silent camping,
Now, screaming back, with floating mane,

The iron-horse goes tramping.
The camp-fires yet — their early home —

Shall burn and live in song and story ;
The sacred vestal fires of Rome

Less fraught with grace or glory.

While never halting ranks of years

March down the aisles of ages,
The quick-step of our Pioneers

Will echo from the pages
Of Earth's best music; here we greet

This Prince of their great House — no wonder
At such swift manhood — rushing fleet

Through mountains reft asunder.

We love the sparkling jewels huug

On Time's broad breast by sages ;
We treasure rare thoughts said and sung

In other climes and ages;
Nations have knelt to trenchant swords;

But, hushing praise of pen or saber,
Comes music from these iron chords —

A hymn to Thought and Labor!

How brief the time has been ; how few

The days and years repeated
Since ground was broken first to do

The great work — now completed !
Who dare predict what Time at length

May bring to cheer mankind or frighten,
While gazing on the stalwart strength

Of this errand free-born Titan ?

[ 20]

All honor to the work ! All praise

To men through whose devotion \
Nature now kneels in open ways \

From ocean unto ocean !
Great mountains climbed and cleft; broad plains,

Bleak deserts and rich valleys blending
From West to East will mingle strains

Of triumph — never ending.

The belt of fire Columbia rears

Shall never lose its luster!
The flaming scroll she proudly bears

From sea to sea, shall muster,
On distant shores, in darker lands,

A host of men — and God will lead them
To seek, and guard from Vandal hands,

Our shrines of Hope and Freedom !

EEPOET

Committee appointed Nov. 11th, 1873,

BY THE

Chamber of Commerce

OF SAJV FRANCISCO,

TO PREPARE BILLS FOR LEGISLATIVE ACTION OjST THE SUBJECT OF'

FAEES AJNTD FEEIGHTS.

COMMITTEE.

C. T. HOPKINS, .... Chaebman.
JOHN H. WISE, I. W. RAYMOND,

M. J. O'CONNOR, ALBERT MILLER.

PRINTED FOR THE CHAMBER.

SAN FRANCISCO :

BACON & COMPANY, STEAM POWER BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS,
Corner Clay and Sansome Streets.

1873.

CALIFORNIA 'JBPARV

EESOLUTIONS.

At the regular meeting of the Chamber, held November 11th,
1873, C. T. Hopkins moved the following resolutions, which were
unanimously adopted :

Whereas, The regulation of railroad fares and freights, by
legislative enactment, is now one of the most momentous questions
before the American people, and will doubtless engage the atten-
tion of our next Legislature ; and

Whereas, The subject is one of vital importance to the mercan-
tile community of our city, and requires all the elucidations that
can be brought to bear upon it, either in the Legislature or out of
it, in order to avoid the great evil of hasty legislation on this most
complicated of questions, be it

Resolved, First : That a Committee of five members be appointed
by the Chair, under instructions to examine the subject in all its
bearings, and to prepare a bill or bills for legislative action thereon ;
said Committee to report at a special meeting to be called for that
purpose during the month of December;

Second : That all persons having suggestions to make or com-
plaints to urge against the existing management of California rail-
roads, be invited to present the same forthwith to said Committee.
Whereupon Messrs. C. T. Hopkins, John H. Wise, M. J. O'Con-
nor, I. W. Raymond and Albert Miller were appointed as Com-
mittee.

REPORT

To the President of the Chamber of Commerce at San
Francisco.

The Committee raised at the last regular meeting of this body,
for the purpose of considering the subject of the regulation of fares
and freights on railroads by legislative action, and to embody their
views in a bill or bills, to be supported by the Chamber in the Leg-
islature, have carefully performed the duty allotted to them, and
now beg leave to report as follows :

Your Committee has undertaken its labors at the close of a two
years' controversy between the people on one side and the railroad
company on the other. This contest has been marked throughout
with the bitterness, the suspicion, the exaggeration and personal
animosities that usually characterize American politics. On the
one side we find arrayed under one shrewd management nearly all
the railroads yet constructed under California organizations. These
constitute a most formidable monopoly, and having attained their
present power almost wholly through political means, they have for
years made themselves felt throughout the State and in Washing-
ton whenever an election or legislation was likely, even in the re-
motest degree, to affect their interests. On the other side we find
the people and the most influential members of the press, who, on
behalf of the rights of the masses, of the purity of representation,
and of American equality, have made continued and sturdy assaults
upon the monster monopoly.

Though during last year several members of this Committee took
an active part in the Committee of One Hundred, and did all they
could to curb the power of the railroad by the inauguration of an
efficient opposition, we do not feel called upon to treat the present
topic in a partisan spirit. For while we are sharers in the common

joy, that railroad power has received a serious check in the polit-
ical field, we feel that there is danger of a vindictive use of a
triumph which is far from complete, and whose permanence is by
no means assured. We foresee a tendency, now that we have
driven the enemy for the time being off our own territory, to follow
him into his own. Let us take heed lest in demanding security for
the future we cripple and disable the railroads, thereby not only
inflicting serious damage upon the State at large, but ultimately
causing a reaction in favor of the monopoly.

Laying aside, therefore, all political animosity, and regarding
the question merely from a business point of view, our duty is to
examine facts as they exist, in their bearings upon the general in-
terests of the State, and to deduce therefrom judicially — and not
as attorneys or party writers — -the best course to be pursued for
the common good. We therefore have not now to deal with the his-
tory of the Central Pacific Railroad, with the Contract and Finance
Company , with the railroad's lust for subsidies, or its use of corruption.
But we must consider it as our only common carrier, as a monopoly
occupying ground impregnable to competition for many years to
come, and as an institution armed with the means of oppression
which the law is the only remedy competent to reach. It is de-
voutly to be wished that the Legislature might find some means to
deprive the railroads of their power of corruption ; it is our business
to try to restrain their power of oppression.

Power of this State over Corporations.

The first question in our inquiry relates to the extent of the
power of the State of California over her railroad corporations.

Originally railroads, like other private corporations, were char-
tered by the older States and by the British Government, through
special legislative enactment in each case respectively. These
special charters were decided by the Courts to be in the nature of
contracts, and the legislature lost control over them after they had
been accepted by the corporations. So when, in 1783, a bill was
introduced into Parliament for the purpose of remodeling the char-
ter of the East India Company, it was opposed by Mr. Pitt and
Lord Thurlow, not only as a dangerous violation of the charter of

the Company, but as a total subversion of the law and constitution
of the country. In the nervous language of the latter, it was " an
atrocious violation of private property, which cut every Englishman
to the bone." * In the 10th Section of the loth Article of the Fed-
eral Constitution, it is declared that "no State shall pass any ex
post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts" Un-
der this clause it has been settled that the charter of a private cor-
poration, whether civil or eleemosynary, is an executed contract
between the Government and the corporators, and that the legisla-
ture cannot repeal, impair, or alter it, against the consent, or with-
out the default of the corporation judicially ascertained and de-
clared." f But Chief Justice Marshall says, in the celebrated
Dartmouth College case, above referred to: "A corporation is an
artificial being — the mere creature of the law — it possesses only
those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it,
either expressly or as incidental to its very existence."

Now what are the properties which the law of the State of
California confers upon the corporation in question ? If the Central
Pacific Railroad were incorporated by virtue of a special charter,
there might be some virtue in the argument of Governor Stanford
in his letber to your Committee, submitted herewith, when he says :
" I cannot see wherein the State has the moral right, if she have
the technical, to make radical changes in the law, not merely of a
police nature, but which may directly and injuriously affect the
money value of the property called into existence under and by
operation of the State's own statutes." The fallacy in this plea
betrays itself in presence of the fact that this corporation exists
under and by virtue of a State Constitution containing this clause
Art. IV, Sec. 31, "Corporations may be formed under general
laws, but shall not be created by special act, except for municipal
purposes. All general laivs and special acts passed pursuant to this
section may be altered from time to time or repealed." Accord-
ingly, Sec. 30 of the General Incorporation Act, passed April 22d,
1850, which was the law under which the Central Pacific and all

*Angell & Ames on Corporations, p. 784.

f Dartmouth College vs. Woodward, 4 Wheaton, 518, and many other cases cited
by Angell & Ames on Corporations, 7fc>5.

our other railroad companies were incorporated, provides that " the
Legislature may at any time amend or repeal this act and dissolve
all corporations created under it" etc. The effect of this clause
in the organic act is thus explained in a recent case by the New
York Court of Appeals : " The general railroad act itself may
provide that the corporations formed under it may be annulled or
dissolved at any time by the Legislature. The effect of this and
similar provisions has frequently been before us, and we have held
that under the reserved power the Legislature might interfere in
many important respects with the powers of corporations by sub-
jecting them to new restrictions and increased burdens." Albany
Northern Railroad v. Brownell, 10 New York, p. 350.

Now, bearing in mind the difference between public corporations,
such as the governments of cities, towns, and counties, all of which
are at all times and everywhere subject to unrestricted legislative
control, and private corporations, which, when chartered by special
act as in other States, are not so subject, we have to inquire
whether or not a railroad company is a mere private corporation,
whether specially chartered or otherwise. We find this answered
in Swan vs. Williams, 2 Michigan, p. 27, where the Court says :
" A railroad company, so far as the stockholders are concerned, is a
private corporation, though as it regards the power of the legisla-
ture to authorize the taking of private property for public use, it
may be regarded as a quasi public corporation."

From due consideration of the above authorities we conclude :
That under the organic law of California and the statute passed
in pursuance thereof, under which the Central Pacific and associ-
ated railroad companies were incorporated, as well as under the
quasi public character of those corporations, they are estopped from
pleading exemption from legislative control, even in financial mat-
ters, and cannot plead any contract with the State, as a protection
against the enforcement of a clause in the Constitution itself.
And here we cannot but mark the wise forethought of the framers
of our Constitution, who introduced a clause so exactly designed to
protect the people from the power of overgrown monopolies.
Those men were Democrats in the days when Democracy meant
the rights of the people against corporations and aristocracies. Is
it not an anomaly that notwithstanding the existence of these re-

served powers in our Legislature, it is only in the insurance busi-
ness that that body has ever undertaken to exert them, while rail-
road, banking, mining, and all other forms of corporation have
been and are left wholly free from inspection or control ? Do not
the prices of gas and water, as fixed by monopolies in this city, re-
quire legislative regulation as well as freights and fares ?

Is the State Power overruled by the Federal ?

Gov. Stanford has on several occasions advanced the theory ex-
pressed in the postscript to his letter to your Committee, that Con-
gress having the sole right to regulate the Tariffs on the Central
Pacific Kailroad, the State has been superseded by the Federal
Government in its rights over that Company. We think this posi-
tion to be untenable. The language of the Act of Congress,
incorporating the Union Pacific Railroad and incidentally conferring
lands, bonds, and rights of way upon the Central Pacific Railroad
Company of California — whose existence as a State corporation
is therein recognized — is as follows :

" Sec. 18. And he it further enacted, that whenever it appears
that the net earnings of the entire road and telegraph, including
the amount allowed for services rendered to the United States,
after deducting all expenditures, including repairs, and the furnish-
ing, running and managing of said roads shall exceed ten per centum
upon its cost, exclusive of the five per centum to be paid to the
United States, Congress may reduce the rates of fare thereon, if
unreasonable in amount, and may fix and establish the same by law ;
and the better to accomplish the object of this Act, namely, to pro-
mote the public interest and welfare by the construction of said
railroad and telegraph line, etc., Congress may at any time,
having due regard for the rights of said companies named therein,
add to, alter, amend or repeal this Act."

Now the Central Pacific was incorporated under the laws of
California as a State corporation. It was not, like the Union
Pacific, incorporated by Congress. The latter power merely recog-
nized and assisted it. The power to repeal, amend, etc., reserved
in the foregoing section, could therefore only operate so as to deprive
the Company of what Congress had conferred upon it, not of its

corporate existence, nor of its branches in California. The power
to regulate fares would undoubtedly be available over the main
line of the road, which passes through other States than Cali-
fornia, under the right of Congress to control interstate commerce ;
but as that right is inoperative under the Act quoted until ten per
cent, upon the cost of the road has been exceeded, how can it be
said that the State cannot regulate within her own border or before
that point has been attained ? How does this Act of Congress
operate to deprive the State of her sovereignty, or to nullify in
favor of the United States the express language of her Consti-
tution and laws ?

Why are Railroads a Political Power ?

We submit this brief resume of the law, (which might be indef-
initely extended) in order to exhibit the motive which, in this State
peculiarly, furnishes the railroads an excuse for intermeddling with
politics. "Self-defense is the first laiv of Nature.'1'' Know-
ing the weakness of their position on this question, and their
liability to legislative interference at any time, they have sought
to avert it both in the Legislature and Congress by securing
the "personnel of those bodies in their own interest ; and until our
State shall settle, by just and permanent legislation, the course of
policy it intends to pursue towards the railroads, so long will the
feeling of insecurity stimulate them to continue the system of cor-
ruption in politics which has roused such opposition against them.
We now proceed, therefore, to examine how far it is expedient for
the Legislature to exercise the rights entrusted to it by the Con-
stitution.

Inexpediency of Harsh Legislation.

Alarmed and angry as our people have the right to be at the
establishment among them of the most formidable monopoly that
ever ruled a free State, and especially at the systematic intrigue
and trickery constantly employed to stave off investigation and in-
crease its power, we believe that no respectable body of men
can be found who really desire to make the legitimate business of
building and operating railroads unprofitable in our State. Rail-

roads are now an indispensable adjunct of civilization. The 1,222
miles already in operation have conferred incalculable benefits upon
both city and country. They have brought into market millions of
acres of land, and increased the receipts of wheat from 8,401,990
bushels in 1868 to 18,580,830 bushels in 1873. The benefits
they are capable of producing are just beginning to be felt, while
their presence in some portions of the State has made the need of
them vastly more apparent in other portions. If by legislative
enactment, the stockholders in oar present roads are deprived of
dividends, what inducement can we offer to others to prosecute the
business in other directions, or to undertake opposition to the mon-
opoly ? The present indebtedness of the Central Pacific to Europe
and the East reaches $54,084,000. Can we be blind to the fact that
the credit of our State in the great money markets of the world is
far more dependent on the prompt payment of interest on this large
sum than on the protection of the three or four millions each of our
city and State bonds ? It is to Europe we constantly look for the
means of future development in the hundred channels of internal
improvement. Should we not kill the goose that lays the golden
eggs if we allow passion or resentment to push the railroads into
bankruptcy ?

Railroad Stocks do not pay Investors.

Furthermore, we have to consider that at present our railroad
stockholders are situated somewhat like the ass between two bundles
of hay — their creditors on the one side, their customers on the other.
If the creditors are to get their dues, the people deem themselves
oppressed ; while if the latter are gratified with low rates, the cred-
itors must be defrauded. Thus the burden may be shifted from
side to side in most uncomfortable fashion, while in view of the
scarcity of dividends thus far, the chances of the animal's getting
fat are not worth talking about. Certainly the railroads
must be allowed to earn their operating expenses, their repairs,
interest, maintenance of road and equipment. They must be
suffered to eventually earn the principal of their debts, and mean-
while the money of stockholders, be it less or more, ought to earn
a dividend at least commensurate with the interest the money would

be worth if otherwise invested. The fact that the Government
loaned the Company $27,855,680 is no argument for reducing its
income, so long as the road is mortgaged for the advance and must
ultimately be foreclosed unless its earnings enable it to discharge
the lien. Is it not self-evident that if at least ordinary liberty to
manage railroad business, so as to comply with their engagements,
be denied to investors, that style of investment must cease, or be
relegated only to sharpers and speculators who will seek their
emolument in the construction, not the operation of the roads ?

We take the following figures from the report of the Directors
to the stockholders of the Central Pacific Railroad for the year
1872:

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Let us allow, for the sake of argument, that the first of the above
tables gives a true statement of the cost of constructing the road.
We have then —

Construction account 1130,485,678 74

Equipment " 5,622,693 04

Real Estate " 968,976 06

Shop " 813,986 96

Machinery in Shops 466,241 29

Steamer 830,372 90

Total for 1,222 miles $139,187,948 99

Equal to $113,894 per mile.

But, deducting the item of $54,084,000 from capital account
(generally considered a doubtful item), the construction account
must be reduced to balance, and this would give the cost of the
road and equipment at $85,093,944, or $69,634 per mile.

According to the Company's statement, the net earnings per
mile have averaged 5| per cent on the average cost of the road
per mile, and on our calculation 9jf0 per cent. Out of which the
Company must pay interest at an average rate of 6 per cent.,
showing that, if their accounts are true, they fail as yet to earn
their interest by three-quarters per cent, per year ; and if they are
false as to the item of paid-up capital, they have thus far realized
but 3.35 per cent, per annum on the cost of the road.

No Reliable Basis for Legislation.

Now, bearing in mind that all the public know about this Com-
pany is what its managers choose to tell us, and that their reports
to their stockholders are made to suit themselves, how are we to
know whether or not the present average fares are so high as to
require reduction by law ? Hence the very first requisite to in-
telligent action in the premises is wanting, and we have already
pointed out the great danger of legislating in the dark. The first
thing we have to do, therefore, is to acquire on behalf of the State
an accurate knowledge of the interior construction and working of
the railroad Companies.

Another fact bears on this point. No one outside the railroad
employ knows anything accurately about the nature of that enor-
mous and most complicated business. If the Legislature approaches
the subject by committee, what results ? The members of the
committee know little about it of their own knowledge. Ignorance,
fear, confused and impracticable notions, characterize all testimony
that can be adduced against the railroad, while the latter is always
prepared to completely overwhelm all opposition, as they did last
session, by producing on their side all the witnesses who really
understand the subject. If, under these circumstances, reports
can be obtained of any value except to the railroad, the men who
make them must ignore evidence, and decide according to prejudice
or passion, as they have lately done in Illinois.

Pro rata Rates Impracticable.

Deeming it then a charge not proven, and one that cannot be
proven under our existing lack of information — that the average of
fares and freights in this State, as compared with that unknown
quantity, the cost of the roads, demands reduction — but admitting
that they may soon prove more than remunerative, owing to the
steady increase of business shown by the company's reports, the
question arises, " How are we to deal with the subject?" And here
we are met with difficulties at every turn. The usual proposition
is to limit all charges to a certain equal or proportionate rate per
ton, or per passenger per mile. To do this requires the adjustment of
all freights upon the basis of weight and distance only, without refer-
ence to the values of goods hauled, cost of handling, grades and curves,
empty mileage of trains, liability to damage, amount of business
done, or to competition. The effect of some of these elements, and
consequent difficulty of framing a just tariff, has been exhaustively
treated in the reply of Mr. Stanford to eleven questions addressed
him by this Committee, a copy of which, with his reply, is submitted
herewith. The simple rule of rates per mile has been the basis of
a vast amount of legislation in other countries and States. But
the result has always been a failure, for the following reasons :

1st. No such rate can be fixed with justice to the railroads, ex-
cept at the average figure which the road ought to earn. Call

this 3i cents per mile, which is about the present figure in Cali-
fornia. Now, bulky materials— such as coal, lumber, grain, hay,
stone, etc. — cannot pay this price except for short distances. Coal
from the Rocky Mountains, hauled 1,000 miles at 3i cents, would
cost $35 per ton for freight alone, while its. value here is but $15.
Hence, this coal trade must cease ; though at $10 for freight it can
be continued at a profit. Lumber is now hauled from Colfax to San
Francisco (184 miles) at $40 per car load of 5,000 feet, or $8 per
1,000 feet. But at 3£ cents per mile, the rate would be raised to
$17 per 1,000 feet; which, on a market price of $20 per M at San
Francisco, would at once destroy that branch of the lumber trade.
On the other hand, dry goods and other manufactured articles,
now paying 10^° cents per ton per mile— as from Ogden to San Fran-
cisco— and worth hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars per ton have
no cause for complaint, and would be unreasonably benefited by a
fixed rate of 3£ cents, at the expense of the ruin of the coal and
lumber merchants. These principles run through the entire list of
articles transported bf rail.

2d. An arbitrary rate per mile cannot be established with the
slightest reference to the cost of running trains, or of constructing
the various portions of the roads, varying from $10,000 to $150,000
per mile. Such items as the following must be ignored :

The amount of traffic to be handled.

The proportion of empty mileage to paying mileage.

Grades and curves.

Competition at some points and not at others.

Necessary arrangements with connecting roads beyond the
State.

The fixed expense of loading and unloading, whether freights
be hauled a long or a short distance, respectively.

The variation in amount of business at different seasons, or in
different years.

3d. The cost of removing crops would become nearly propor-
tioned to the distance from market ; whereby the value of distant
farms would diminish with the increased freight charges, until such
value would disappear altogether. It is in view of the fact that
the longer the haul (other things being equal) the cheaper can the
railroad afford the service — that the effect of distance has been, in

great measure, destroyed by railroads. It costs as much to raise
wheat 1,000 miles from market as ten miles. Its value in the mar-
ket is the same, wherever it is raised. But if it costs one farmer
35 cents and the other $35 to haul it to market, the consequence
in reversing the present order of things becomes painfully evident.
The result would be to limit all wheat-raising within a given radius
from market. Do we desire such a result in our State ?

Experience of Older States.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., who has been a railroad commis-
sioner in Massachusetts since the law was passed in 1869, and who
has contributed, perhaps more than any other man, to the intelligible
railroad literature of America, expresses himself on this subject, in
his report for 1872, as follows :

" The great obstacle in the way of the practical success of leg-
islative regulation of fares and freight, has been the excessive if
not the insurmountable difficulty found in regulating a most com-
plex and delicate system, subject to all sorts of vicissitudes and
requirements, by laws of general application. Where the Acts passed
were simple and easily understood, as the many Acts which have
been passed in almost all the States of the Union regulating fares
and freights at so much per mile for each passenger and for each
ton of freight, they have in practice been found to work results so
unanticipated, and in many cases so unreasonable, that such Acts
have proved hardly more than dead letters on the Statute book.
Nowhere has this system been more persistently followed out than
in Ohio. Bates have there been repeatedly established by law for
the carriage both of persons and of merchandise ; but the State
Commissioner on railroads and telegraphs, in his last annual report,
expresses himself very distinctly on the practical operation of these
laws. He says : ' There is not a railroad operated in this State,
either under special charter or general law, upon which the law
regulating rates is not in some way violated, nearly every time a
regular passenger, freight, or mixed train passes over it.' He then
proceeds to enumerate the laws, and to point out the anomalies to
which the enforcement of them must lead ; and finally closes his
comments with the remark, that ' a strict enforcement of these
2

provisions would compel some companies ultimately to suspend
business, prohibit the transportation of certain articles by rail, or
compel their transportation below actual cost.' Annual Report of
Ohio, pp. 6-8."

Mr. Adams proceeds to remark : " Simple and comprehensible
laws have uniformly been found impracticable in application. Where,
in order to avoid this difficulty, more complicated and discriminat-
ing statutes have been passed, the complexity of the system has
uniformly, so far as the Commissioners are advised, caused the
law, when put in operation, to break down under its own weight.
Where special legislation has been resorted to — as has been done
in England — long tariffs and lists of charges, covering all articles
of merchandise transported by rail, having been inserted in the
charters of particular companies — it has been found that the devel-
opment and necessities of trade have in practice, and even with
common consent, nullified these provisions, which did not possess
the flexibility absolutely requisite to the movements of modern
commerce."

True Principles of Legislation.

From the consideration of what we have thus far adduced, and
from such careful and we believe impartial study as we have been
enabled to give the whole subject, we think the following proposi-
tions to be evidently true :

1st. The railroads in California are subject to regulation by the
Legislature.

2d. It is not expedient that the Legislature should so exercise
its power at present as to reduce the income of the roads, or do
any act or threaten any course at any time which would cripple
them, endanger the non-payment of interest on their debts,
render them an unprofitable investment, or property therein inse-
cure, whereby competition would be discouraged.

3d. That in the present absence of accurate knowledge as to the
cost of construction of our railroads, the Legislature cannot know
whether the rates of fares and freights should be reduced.

4th. That from the exceedingly complicated nature of railroad
business, no legislative committee, not composed of railroad ex-

perts, can so investigate the condition and workings of the compa-
nies, within the limits of any session, as to arrive at a safe basis for
legislation.

5th. That any such attempt at investigation must result in favor
of the railroads, for the reasons that all real knowledge of the sub-
ject is confined to their employes, who would be witnesses.

6th. That nevertheless there is great need of such legislative
control as will curb the present power of oppression by the rail-
roads, who are now wholly free to discriminate between persons
and places, to ruin their enemies and favor their friends by changes
in fares and freights, to intimidate the public by their reserved
right to make such changes without notice, to create monopoly in
the express business, to speculate in town sites at the expense of
old communities, to bribe public officers by the use of free passes,
and to refuse justice to small claimants by reason of the expense of
litigation.

7th. That there is need for a department in the executive branch
of the State Government that shall be so constituted and empowered
as to acquire for the use of the Legislature all necessary informa-
tion, and meanwhile act as a constant check upon the railroads,
having powers to investigate, to arbitrate, and to advise in certain
cases, to prevent extortion and unjust discrimination, to protect the
people at every point where railroads might oppress them, and gen-
erally to mount guard along the line where the liberty of the corpo-
rations ends and that of the people begins.

8th. That until such time as the investigations of such a depart-
ment shall show to the Legislature wherein and by what means the
income of the corporations is required to be reduced in the true in-
terest of the people, the corporations should be free to manage their
own business in their own way, so long as they observe all the rights
of their patrons and the public.

9th. That, if the present Legislature shall see fit to enact these
principles into law, with assurance to the railroads of future secur-
ity from aggressive or wanton attacks upon their property, the
motive of self-preservation, now urging them continually into poli-
tics, will disappear, and with it all pretense of justification for their
past course in this regard.

Bills Proposed by this Committee.

We now therefore submit to your consideration two bills, which?
we propose, shall be supported bj this Chamber in the Legislature.
One of these, entitled : "An Act creating a Board of Transpor-
tation Commissioners, and prescribing their duties and powers"
has been suggested and mainly drawn from the railroad laws of
Massachusetts. But we have modified the law enacted by that com-
monwealth in several important respects. For the circumstances of
the two States vary greatly. Massachusetts has forty railroad cor-
porations, running often in competition with each other. California
has but one, to which no competition is likely to arise for many
years to come. Moreover, the Massachusetts railroads being char-
tered by the Legislature under special acts, are not under the con-
trol of that body in the same sense, nor to the same extent as are
those of California. We have therefore designed for our Trans-
portation Commissioners much more power than Massachusetts has
entrusted to hers. On the other hand, we have given them much
less than the State of Illinois has thrown into the hands of her Rail-
road and Warehouse Commissioners, who are authorized to dictate
to all companies at what rates they shall do business.

The second bill entitled "An Act to prevent extortion and unjust
discrimination in the rates charged for the transportation of passen-
gers and freight on railroads and steamboats in the State, and to
punish the same" is modified from the famous Illinois Statute of
1872. We have not deemed it at all advisable to follow the Gran-
ger legislation of that State, which has invaded the liberties and
rights of the corporations, and thus contributed largely to arrest
the building of railroads, to destroy confidence in their securities,,
and bring on the recent panic in the Eastern States. In these
respects that legislation seems to us likely to overreach itself, and
thus produce a reaction in favor of those great combinations of
capital which it was designed to weaken. We have simply taken
from it so much as we thought expedient to protect the people.
But we have added a section prohibitory of free passes — except in
certain cases — which we think sound public policy requires ; though
it is a new provision, so far as we know, in any law on the subject.

In conclusion, while we are aware that some improvements may
be suggested in our work, we have taken every precaution that
occurred to us, in order to secure the constitutionality and legality
of the proposed measures. We have annotated several sections of
the bills, so as to give the benefit of our discussions to the Chamber
and the Legislature, and display the prominent points thereof.
Should the bills become law, we feel confident that under the ad-
ministration of the right kind of men as Commissioners, the rail-
roads will find their claws cut and their teeth drawn, in any attempt
to oppress the people ; while they will be left free to comply with
all their honest obligations. As to the appointment of the Com-
missioners, we have provided handsome salaries, a long and secure
tenure of office, and a position of sufficient power and responsibility
to tempt the honorable ambition of the very best and most patriotic
minds among us. Cannot such men be found in California as
have adorned this office in Massachusetts ? If not, we deserve to
suffer from all the evils these measures are designed to remedy.
All of which is respectfully submitted.

C T. HOPKINS,
JOHN H. WISE,
M. J. O'CONNOR,
I. W. RAYMOND,
ALBERT MILLER,

Committee.
San Francisco, Dec. 24th, 1873.

San Francisco, Nov. 11th, 1873.
Hon. Leland Stanford,

Prest. C. P. R, R.

Sir : — The Chamber of Commerce, having appointed a
Committee for the purpose of maturing a bill on the subject of
fares and freights to be supported by that body in the Legislature,
I am requested by said Committee to respectfully ask of you replies
to the following questions :

1st. What general mathematical and commercial principles
underlie your present system of fares and freights ? Your tariffs
show wide differences for corresponding distances on the various
roads, as well as in the rates charged on the several classes of goods
carried. Not only does there seem to be no proportion between
the various charges per ton per mile, but we fail to perceive ade-
quate discrimination in favor of the steep grades and sharp curves
of the mountain road, compared with similar charges on the cheaper
road in the San Joaquin Valley. Furthermore, we find your rates
for short distances vastly cheaper than the recent Illinois State
tariff, while for long distances said Illinois charges are far less than
yours.

2d. How are these general principles affected by the arrange-
ments you are compelled to make with Eastern connecting roads,
on through business ?

3d. How are they affected on through business by competition
by sea ? How on local business by water competition on the Bay
and rivers ?

4th. Why is it necessary for you to send goods shipped from
the East for places between Ogden and San Francisco, through to
San Francisco and thence back to the place of destination, charging
both the through freight and the way freight back to such place ?

5th. Does the Central Pacific hold itself responsible, under
through way bills from the East, for damages done to merchandise
beyond its own route ? If not, how are such damages collected by
the consignee ?

6th. How often do you change your tariffs ? Are such changes
periodical — each tariff being strictly executed by your subordinates
until a new one is promulgated — or do you change details from
time to time as occasion requires ?

7th. How many persons, all told, are authorized to administer
your present tariffs, inclusive of freight and passenger agents,
ticket sellers, conductors and station agents ?

8 th. Why do you reserve the right to change any freight
charge without notice to shippers ? Wherein would you be injured
by giving thirty days' notice of all changes ?

9th. Why are Stockton and Visalia discriminated against in
your present tariff?

10th. Have you any objections to make against the prohibition
of free passes by law, except as to cases of charity and employes
of the road ? If so, what ?

11th. Have you any objection to the prohibition by law, under
adequate penalties, of discrimination between persons as to freight
or passage ? If so, what ?

As your full and complete answers to the above will greatly facil-
itate the labors of our Committee, we trust, Sir, that you will find
it convenient to favor us with the same at an early day. And
meantime, I remain very respectfully yours,

C. T. HOPKINS,

Chairman.
For the Committee.

San Francisco, 1st Dec, 1873.

C. T. Hopkins, Chairman of Freight and Fare Committee,
Chamber of Commerce.

Dear Sir : Your favor of November 20th was duly received,
and has been under careful consideration. The various questions
suggested involve in their full and proper answer an amount of
explanation hardly commensurate with the limits of any ordinary
communication ; but having a desire that the queries you propound
should be understood by the public, I submit the following towards
promoting that end. You state " that the Chamber has appointed
a Committee for the express purpose of maturing a Bill on the
subject of Fares and Freights." I trust that your Committee
may have no other design in this connection than either the total
abolition of the restrictions now upon our Statutes which fix maxi-
mum rates, or if such rates are to be further limited, or changed,
to provide adequate means whereby the substantial injury which
legislation may inflict upon corporations may be met by proper
compensation by the State ; for it is safe to assume that investments

in railroads by individuals, under our American laws, with their
unusually beneficial character to the public, should have the same
protection from loss or injury by any act of the State, as invest-
ments in property of any other description ; and it is one of the
compacts resulting from our American civilization that no individual
shall be deprived of his property without just compensation, although
all property is held subject to and regulated by law. To me it
seems that the only proper legislation on this subject is that of the
total abolition of any fixed rates by law, and this belief is founded
partly upon the fact that in the other States, where is found the
greatest harmony between the people and the corporations, the laws
upon this subject are either extremely liberal and flexible, or contain
no restrictions whatever ; and partly upon the fact that fixed rates
by law should only properly be restrictions upon monopoly, which
under our laws, permitting any number of aggregations of capital
to be made for the same purpose, is not possible. Whenever
undue profits upon an investment in railroads or any other cor-
porate property accrue, other capital will always be found to enter
into the same business to share such profits, and by competition to
reduce them to a legitimate standard ; and it should be borne in
mind that ownership and control are inseparable ; and so far as
said control is interfered with, the ownership is affected and trans-
ferred ; it being also evident that the benefits derived by the State
from any railroad construction are spread over the entire common-
wealth and embrace the entire range of progress and development,
while the benefits to the owners of a railroad are based solely upon
the return which the limited capital invested may secure to itself,
and as such is but a small fraction of the greater benefits to the
State, which in securing the same must not and cannot rightfully
exert her power to that end at the special and unremunerated
expense of the original investor.

The reason, therefore, does not appear why the profits in rail-
roads should be limited by law any more than the profits derived
from the growth and production of the necessaries of life, or from
the investment in other classes of business, whether corporate or
private.

Without doubt, the cause of the jealous supervision by the com-
monwealth of all railroad interests is found in the paramount import-

ance of the proper transportation of her citizens and their property ;
but the enhanced values to the State at large, consequent upon the
general cheapening of transportation rates, being so enormously
disproportionate to the income derived by the investor from his
road, it seems to be founded upon a totally wrong principle for the
State to demand this great enhancement at the expense of such
investor, who, deriving perhaps but a tenth part of the total values
that he creates by his roads, cannot be expected to supply the
expanding demand of a commonwealth for cheaper transportation
and enhanced values, which only can be met and supplied by the
great beneficiary itself, the body politic. And here, in my judg-
ment, is indicated the only true solution of the problem, being the
attainment of the lowest possible rates in transportation, whereby a
dollar may be invested whenever a dollar may thereby be created,
the investor having the advantage of such creation, such investor,
of course, being the body politic ; and therefore it is, that I cannot
see wherein the State has the moral right, if she have the technical,
to make radical changes in the law, not merely of a police nature,
but which may directly and injuriously affect the money value of
the property called into existence, and now operating under and
by the exercise of the State's own statutes, and which statutes, as
they were when the corporations were organized, are the only guaran-
tees held by the lenders and investors of foreign as well of home
capital, that their property will not be made the medium through
which the discussions and differences of a people and a corporation
may be forcibly adjusted.

The present depression in the finances of the nation, and the
withdrawal of foreign confidence in the integrity of our American
railway securities, is largely caused by what I think you will agree
with me, has been a most injudicious agitation, in and out of legis-
latures, upon the most sensitive part of a railway property,
which is its means of income. So much for the general principles
in the contemplated action of your committee. I now proceed to
consider as well as possible the queries.

The scope of your queries (1) and (2) seems also to include
(3), and hence for convenience I will group the first three in one,
reproducing the others in proper succession in this reply.

Queries (1) (2) (3).

1st. " What general mathematical and commercial principles un-
derlie your present system of fares and freights ? Your tariffs
show wide differences for corresponding distances on the various
roads, as well as in the rates on the several classes of goods carried.
Not only does there seem to be no proportion between the various
charges per ton per mile, but we fail to perceive adequate discrimi-
nations in favor of the steep grades and sharp curves of the moun-
tain roads compared with similar cheaper roads in the San Joaquin
Valley. Furthermore we find your rates for short distances vastly
cheaper than the recent Illinois State tariff, while for long distances
said Illinois charges are far less than yours. "

2d. "How are these general principles affected by the arrange-
ments you are compelled to make with Eastern connecting roads
on through business ? "

3d. "How are they affected on through business by competition
bg sea ? how on local business by water competition on the Bay and

rivers?"

Perhaps the most perplexing problem ever presented to a com-
mercial people is the deduction of a mathematical formula, rule, or
even a general array of rigid mathematical principles by which to
mould and regulate tariffs on railroads. All the principal States
have in different ways and at various times grappled ineffectually
with the subject ; and to-day, in the light of universal failure both in
America and in Europe, the truth is gradually being absorbed by
the public mind, that rigid formulae for tariffs means in many in-
stances absolute prohibition of carriage of many articles except at
a distinct loss, and in all cases a total inability to meet with proper
discrimination the fluctuation and changing demands of commerce
in the transport of all varieties of goods, complicated by the neces-
sity of movement at all times and in all quantities, and these
changes through any one year still further complicated by neces-
sary changes from year to year to meet exigencies which previous
years had not revealed.

With the problem still unsolved and its elements still presenting

themselves in new circumstances of time, place and people, you
will appreciate my reluctance in attempting to base our procedure
in the matter of tariffs, upon the exact sciences.

Our railroad interests, from their incipiency to the present, have
been obliged to combine the following elements in the construction
of their tariffs :

(1.) The acquisition of an income to meet interest on cost of
construction and expenses of operating and maintaining of the road.

(2.) The various physical, commercial and social characterist-
ics of the country in and from which we are to operate and secure
that income.

The first point has a prominent element of simplicity, in that it
involves the acquisition of an amount necessarily fixed with toler-
able certainty ; the second group, on the other hand, involves the
entire range of facts which makes one country different from
another, one State greater or less productive than another, and
one community, town, or locality, more capable of inviting and sus-
taining a railroad than another. And upon the proper understand-
ing of all the various elements of the second group, so far as our
State is concerned, depends the justice or injustice of the general
policy which we have been led to adopt in this State. We have
had to take under consideration the special characteristics of each
portion of California through which our road runs, or into which it
has been projected ; it is vital for us to know and form a judgment
upon the fact whether the San Joaquin Valley, subject as it is to
all its climatic conditions, offers by nature as many inducements to
a permanent and freight-producing population as the Sacramento
Valley ; whether the average class of freight produced will guar-
antee through the year a steady and regular movement of trains,
the tonnage one way balancing the tonnage the other ; or whether
for the people of either one of these valleys, a very small amount
of train service for their supplies is required ; while a very large
amount may be required to carry out the production, as is the case
in the San Joaquin Valley.

The capacity and probability of any particular locality having a
large interchange of traffic between its own stations, is a matter
directly influencing the general rates for local business in such lo-

cality ; it being readily seen that if a hundred-mile division of road
has so little local business as to require cars hauled from long dis-
tances empty, to accommodate short hauls and imperfect loads, the
local tonnage handled must have these facts considered in the
charges made. From Sacramento to the State line, the total vol-
ume of business east and west, while having the direct advantage
of the regular passing of trains in overland and Nevada business,
is still immensely affected by the character of road over which it
passes.

I can thus give you but a faint sketch of the various details and
considerations which go towards making up our freight tariffs. To
enumerate fully would require an elaboration of subjects quite too
great for this communication.

I can, however, state that we endeavor to see that each locality
pays its own way and bears its own expenses as nearly as the laws
of the State and the great variety of conflicting circumstances will
allow.

You state in Query (1) that " your tariffs show wide differences
for corresponding distances." In answer, your attention is directed
to the universality of the very popular error that distance is the
only controlling element in the fixing of tariffs. The contrary is
now so well established in the minds of those who have made the
economy of railroad management a study, that I here merely refer
to it, adding that the service performed must in all cases mainly
dictate the chai-ges for freight, and in that service, as a matter of
fact, distance is not always the most important element.

Our moving loaded cars represent our earning equipment, and
upon the proper and economical use of these cars, aside from the
track itself, depends the relation between the profit and loss of the
road. We possess a gross number of cars, found by experience
to be necessary to do the business of the year when forwarding
has attained its maximum proportions. It must be evident that
the income per car at that period does not at all represent the
income necessary, when forwarding has dwindled to less than a
fourth of its maximum. It also seems to me to be reasonably
evident that, having a construction account upon which to meet
interest, and which is fixed in amount whether we run one train or
one hundred ; also, that a very large element of our operating ex-

penses is independent of the amount of work we do, and hence
becomes a fixed expense ; that it would be unbusiness-like and
ruinous to us to fix a rate of income per car used for the entire
year, upon the basis of the maximum uses of those cars during the
season of greatest tonnage. This tonnage, fluctuating in amount
so radically as is done in this State, makes it absolutely necessary
that we should strive to establish rates that should secure us an
income per car based upon the actual tonnage hauled, modified by
the amount of dead car mileage necessary in hauling said tonnage,
and further modified by the relation of said working cars to their
capacity, if worked up fully to a point commensurate with the
gross expense account, which alone I show to be substantially the
same, whether we work our stock fully or partially.

The fixing of this rate must necessarily be a matter of judgment
in the administration of the road, and must be modified (1) by
the amount of the actual capacity of a car which is used, and (2)
by the proportion of empty mileage which the distribution of the
sources of supply and demand forces upon the cars actually used.
The (1) modification is a substantial element in the basis of class-
ification, another element being the value of the articles carried,
their difficulty in handling, their liability to damage or to damage
other articles, increasing our risks and consequent responsibility in
accepting goods. At this point it would be proper to state that
owing to the limit fixed by our California law, without any refer-
ence whatever to the service performed, which depends upon the
cost of road, grades, curves, amount of business, its character and
the distribution of the same, distance hauled, climatic influences,
and the actual value of cars per diem, whether moved short or
long distances, there appear shown radical differences in the scale
of our Tariffs compared with those of Eastern roads. Notably is
this the case with Illinois, whose present law being a direct result
of a recent attempt at change by the farmers of that State, pro-
duces as a Tariff a rate commencing with $2.40 per ton per mile
and extending to a distance of thirty miles before the decreasing
scale reaches our maximum of fifteen cents per ton per mile. For
long distances the Illinois scale descends quite rapidly, partly based
upon the fact that short distances are made to pay their own way
and hence relieve the long distance ; but more fully upon the fact

that the long distances contribute a very large amount of tonnage,
which, leaving out our Overland business, is not the fact in Califor-
nia. As a direct consequence of this, our longer hauls have to
help sustain the shorter, in order to keep the average rate for all
tonnage as low as we have been able to keep it.

You will see that the deduction as to the average value of cars
per annum is based upon the assumption that each mile of road
contributes to the use of these cars, in the same average amount ;
that this is not the fact is apparent to every one, and upon the
extent of the difference between the contributions and demands of
different localities depends largely the visible differences in rates
for equal distances for such localities.

Our car equipment in 1872 comprised 3,198 cars, flat and box.
Of this number 182 made no mileage, leaving 3,016 cars that made
all the movement of the year. The actual car mileage made was
31,351,667 miles, equivalent to 313,516,670 ton mileage, while the
actual ton mileage was but 190,516,507, or 60 per cent, of the
mileage which the cars were compelled to make on account of the
distance of empty mileage and irregular distribution of tonnage.

It must not be lost sight of that this percentage represents but
the average performance of our freight rolling stock, and that in
order to meet the excessive amount of work demanded of us during
wheat seasons, it has been necessary to keep the entire 3,016 cars
in commission.

The actual freight mileage capacity of these cars, if steadily
worked and allowing proper time for loading and unloading, is about
136,000,000 car mileage, or 1,360,000,000 ton mileage, while the
actual ton mileage performed, based upon the actual car mileage,
being but 310,000,000 — we have the rather startling result of our
actual work in car mileage being but 23 per cent, of the easily
possible car mileage of the equipment which the excessive fluctu-
ations of business in this State forces us to keep on hand.

As this 23 per cent, is still further reduced by the fact that, of
the actual car mileage made, but 60 per cent, was (on account of
long distance hauled empty or imperfectly loaded) of paying ton
mileage, we have as a final result that the total tonnage of our
California system of roads, including " throughs," is but 13 ^ per
cent, of the capacity of the stock which we are forced to keep and

keep moving at different times of the year ; in other words, out of
3,016 cars, but 416 would represent the actual earning ones, did
they have full loads moving with regularity. Here perhaps, is the
key to this question. With this immense disproportion between
what we should do and what we do thus fully shown, it is proper
to finally consider how small a proportion of the general working
capacity of the entire 1,222 miles, taken as a whole, we are able to
utilize, as co npared with well-developed Eastern roads, or with our
own ultimate capacity. The simplest method of comparison is
shown in the difference in the gross tonnage per mile of road.
While the gross tonnage for 1872 on the 1,222 miles of the Cen-
tral Pacific Road was 614 tons per mile, at a general average rate
of 3 m, cents per ton per mile, the Boston & Albany had a tonnage
of 10,790 tons per mile, or say seventeen times as much a3 our own ;
while its rates, with that immense business, present an average of
2io7o per ton per mile — for its "local" business is not at all propor-
tioned to the immense difference in " through " tonnage. As-
suming this Massachusetts road as a standard, you can see that we
have a road, costing a fixed sum, and then cannot work that road
up to more than say one-seventeenth, or, compared with other
roads we could mention, to one-twentieth of its capacity ; and
that the traffic that we carry must, of necessity, pay seventeen or
twenty times as much per ton moved, to meet the fixed expenses
due from construction, as would be the case were the capacity of
the road quite or nearly reached.

With these facts in view and considered, I think that we can
justly claim that we have given our patrons cheaper rates in pro-
portion to the business done than any road in the United States.
From our utter inability under the 15 cents per ton per mile maxi-
mum for short distances to make a car earn its proper daily aver-
age income, together with the other reasons hereinbefore sketched,
as is allowed by the maximum rates of other States, appears the
reason of the difference in our highest rates and shortest distances
as compared with Illinois, and this inadaptability of our law to
short distances. Half loaded cars, light goods, heavy grades and
Curves have necessarily imposed an additional burden upon the
tonnage of longer distances, which must perforce contribute
indirectly to making up the losses incurred by short hauls at the

present maximum rate. Our through business having a long aver-
age haul, where all expenses are reduced nearly to a minimum, is
necessarily much more attractive to us than the violently fluctuat-
ing local business of the State .; and the following facts are offered
in illustration as showing how much even at this date the small
amount of through business has relieved the expensive and less
remunerative local business of portions of its expenses. In 1872
our total tonnage was about 750,000 tons ; of this but 98,000 tons
were " through " or but 13 per cent, of the whole. Notwithstand-
ing the fact that the average through rate was but about 2 ^
cents per ton per mile, a rate largely due to the competition by
sea, this 13 per cent, of the total tonnage earned 31 per cent, of
the total freight income for the year. The 87 per cent, of local
tonnage paid an average rate of 4.66 cents per ton per mile. A
prolific source of reflection is found in the fact that out of 881
miles of through line, the average haul of each ton of through
freight was 866 miles, while with 1,222 miles of road, to create
local business, the average haul was but 162 miles for each ton.

Before leaving this branch of the subject a statement of the
relations between our various divisions will perhaps more thoroughly
illustrate why differences exist in their rates.

The total business emanating from the Visalia Division and sent
to San Francisco and Oakland for the year 1872, including grain,,
amounted to 60,551 tons, while the total tonnage going from San
Francisco to that division was but 13,489 tons, in other words 78
per cent, of the cars required to bring the products of the San
Joaquin Valley out, had to go in empty. This represents the aver-
age throughout the division. Considering each locality of the
division separately, we perceive that while the percentage of empty
mileage is less than here given near the lower end, it increases
rapidly near Visalia and the upper end, exceeding this 78 per cent,
where the production and demand are small. Your attention is
directed to this fact as one of the prime causes for what may appear
to be high rates up that Valley. As against this, the Oregon divis-
ion, with substantially the same relative situation, sent to San Fran-
cisco 24,615 tons, receiving, however, from that point 25,487 tons.
Here the amounts are so nearly equal that but little empty car

mileage was required, this being one of the elements justifying a
lower average rate than upon the Visalia division.

The most apparent effect of the presence of the river competition
upon our rates is illustrated in the case of Sacramento, where low
class goods are carried to San Francisco at rates as low as one and
seven-tenths cents per ton per mile, and in the presence of such
water competition where we have the advantage of regular
trains moving on other business, we take business at very low rates
rather than not get it, our rule being to take all freight that offers
sooner than not to take it, if it will pay the additional cost conse-
quent upon its movement. This fact, however, would hardly justify
any conscientious legislator in demanding that all business of the
road should be conducted on the same basis.

Query 4.

" Why is it necessary for you to send goods, shipped from the
East for places between Ogden and San Francisco, through to San
Francisco, and thence bach to the place of destination, charging
both the through freight and the iv ay freight back to such places?"

We do not do this : all goods marked for any intermediate
point on the line of our road, go there ; but they are charged the
sum of the through rates of each road which they may traverse ;
the justice of this can be made apparent.

The policy of all transportation companies, when in the pres-
ence of competition, is to take goods very low, and sometimes with
no profit margin whatever, rather than not take them at all. San
Francisco being considered as the terminus of a long line of rail-
way from New York, Chicago, or other large cities, also holds the
enviable position of being the terminus of numerous sea routes, and
hence is a competitive point. This being a fact, and being desirous
of building up our overland business, we finally prevailed upon our
Eastern connections to waive their claims to their own usual charges
on their own individual roads, and to join in the authorizing of
agents in the large cities to receive goods and ship direct to San
Francisco at a very low rate, to meet competition by sea, each road
taking but a pro rata of such through rate as compensation for
hauling the cars and work done. At first this privilege was con-
3

ceded alone to San Francisco on account of her position, all over-
tures by us on behalf of other points being for a long time steadily
refused ; for what is really the simple reason that such points in
California, not having the advantages of competition by sea, had
no more claims in the estimation of eastern roads to the exceptional
advantages of the low through rate, than their own business, which
was through to them. We have finally secured for three other
points a recognition as through points, viz. : Sacramento, Marys-
ville, and San Jose ; but all further concessions in our State have
been resisted, and to-day it stands as a fact that any goods shipped
from New York, Chicago, etc., direct to Reno, Stockton, or any
point other than the four cities named, are sent way-billed with the
ordinary through charges of each road over which they may pass.
Shippers understanding this fact now rarely ship direct to the
place of destination when other than the cities named, but prefer
to take advantage of and to profit by the exceptionally low rate
forced by the sea traffic, by first shipping to one of these four
points, and then re-ship, by the payment of our usual local rate, to
the final point of destination. In this way the aggregate charges
are very much lower than though the goods had been sent direct
at the local rates to which they were legitimately subject. You
may perhaps see from this, that instead of these arrangements
being any proper source of complaint, the advantages which all
local points in our State derive from having their tonnage delivered
to them at the rates secured to the larger cities alone, by reason
of their exceptional location, plu3 the local rate therefrom, should
not be so persistently thrust in the background ; and it seems to
be proper to remember here that the building of the overland rail-
road did not and cannot change immediately California's generally
isolated condition ; and our claims upon the Eastern system of
railroads, for all of the benefits of their lower rates, can only be
met for the present through our well-known and largest centers,
all other points receiving only such concessions as their positions
apparently entitle them to. As fast as we can induce our Eastern
connections to recognize other points in this State as entitled to the
benefits of the through rates, we shall do so, and trust soon to
announce that Stockton will be added to the list. So far as Reno
is concerned, it is out of reach of any competitive advantages, and

by its position has no claims whatever to profit by the benefits con-
ferred upon San Francisco or Sacramento. If you will remember
that competitive rates by no manner of means represent the just
or fair basis of charges for the entire road, but are always the
result of a contest for supremacy between rival routes, and hence
may often deplete a railroad treasury, instead of adding to it, I
think you will agree with me that points which have no competitive
advantages have no just cause for complaint, when asked to pay
only such rates as would naturally exist, did San Francisco have
no sea traffic whatever.

Query 5.

" Does the Central Pacific hold itself responsible under through
way-bills from the East, for damages done to merchandise beyond
its own route ? If not, how are such damages collected by the
consignee?"

To this, we answer, no ; but we are now, for the benefit of the
shipper, endeavoring to secure from our Eastern connections the
authority to adjust all losses and proper claims whenever they
occur, and charge the same to the Company which may be inter-
ested. At present, in cases of reclamation for damages beyond
our line, our General Freight Agent, as an accommodation to our
customers, enters into correspondence with the road upon which
loss or damage may have occurred ; and after more or less delay,
we usually succeed in having just claims allowed and paid. This
is the usual course of procedure of consignees ; but, as we above
stated, we hope to have this changed, thus securing expedition in
all such adjustments.

Query 6.

"How often do you change your tariff? Are such changes
periodical ? Is each tariff strictly executed by your subordinates
until a new one is promulgated ? or do you change details from
time to time, as occasion requires ?"

We do not attempt a revision of our tariff as a whole but once
a year, at which period, the experience of the past year and ex-
pectations of the future are brought to bear upon the tariff, and

such changes are made as are deemed necessary to secure us our
proper income. This procedure, however, does not apply to changes
in individual items of the tariff, which are made whenever by so
doing we can promote and encourage business or development in
any direction, so as to bring traffic to the road, or when we find
that the moving volume of any leading article is lower or greater
than we had supposed when the tariff was made. All tariffs are
strictly followed by subordinates until change in whole or in part is
made.

Query 7.

" How many persons, all told, are authorized to administer your
present tariff, inclusive of freight and passenger agents, ticket
sellers, conductors and station agents ? "

On our total of 1,222 miles we have 148 stations, 100 being upon
the Central Pacific main trunk. As each station deals with every
other station, there results by combination very great opportunity in
our roads for the incorrect administration of our tariffs. For in-
stance, there are 21,904 of such combinations, and when you
consider the liability to error in further dealing with the necessary
difference of classification of goods, the resulting liability to error
becomes very apparent. As each station is represented by an
agent, or where there is none, by the conductor, the number of
stations and their combinations substantially supplies the information
desired.

Query 8.

" Why do you reserve the right to change any freight charge
iviihout notice to. the shipper? Wherein would you be injured by
giving thirty days' notice of all changes?"

The principal reason is again based upon our extremely change-
able relations with the Eastern roads, and as we must hold ourselves
in readiness to meet changes in through tariffs under telegraphic
notice, we can do no less than reserve the right to change our own
at any time. So far as relates to all local or State business, although
we are satisfied that such notice would be a cause of real incoven-
ience to shippers at large, in this : that upon such notice being
given of a raise in rates, shippers of articles raised would rush to

profit by the lower rates, and not being able to secure cars any
more rapidly than would be usual at that station, would suffer
inconvenience, perhaps loss, for which we could not be accountable,
still, if the law imposed such a stipulation upon us, it would not
seriously affect the efficiency of our administration.

Query 9.

" Why are Stockton and Visalia discriminated against in your
present tariff?"

Inasmuch as I am not aware that either Stockton or Visalia is
discriminated against, but that each has received and will continue
to receive the fullest consideration, which its water competition and
the character, volume, and regularity of its business entitles it to
demand, I can only answer this query by a denial of such dis-
crimination.

Queries 10 and 11.

" Have you any objection to make against the prohibition of
free passes by law except as to cases of charity and employes
of the road? If so, what? Have you any objection to the
prohibition by law under adequate penalties of discrimination
between persons, as to freight or passage ? If so, what ?"

Although as a rule we believe that in the management of a rail-
road the utmost freedom from restraint promotes the best general
results, and as outside of the general passes usually issued by
courtesy to public officers, the theory is that they are only given
for some service performed or to be performed, still we should not
be unwilling to have all passes abolished by law, except for em-
ployes and their families where deemed proper ; for charitable
purposes ; and for the officers or business agents of other roads
with which we are in communication. These reservations we deem
necessary and proper as promoting the actual efficiency of the
road. As we have repeatedly denied making discriminations
between persons in the carriage of their freight, where such freight
was of like character, from the same station, and similarly circum-
stanced, I can only repeat such denial and express our willingness

to abide by any law which may be enacted, making discrimination
against persons for the carriage of the same articles, similarly
circumstanced, unlawful.

Trusting that this communication may sufficiently answer the
subject matter of your letter, I am, very respectfully,

Your Obedient Servant,

Leland Stanford.

P. S. — Congress having the sole right to regulate the Tariffs on
the Central Pacific Railroad, I hope in any bill recommended by
your Committee on the subject, this fact, so far as affecting that
road, may not be lost sight of. L. S.

A.HST ACT

Creating a Board of Transportation Commissioners, and prescrib-
ing their duties and powers.

The People of the State of California, represented in Senate
and Assembly, do enact as follows :

Sec. 1. The Governor, with the advice and consent of the Sen-
ate, shall before the 15th day of May, 1874, appoint three competent
persons, one of whom shall be an educated and experienced civil
engineer, who shall constitute a Board of Transportation Commis-
sioners, and shall hold their offices for two, three, and four years,
respectively (in the order of the dates of their several appoint-
ments), from the said 15th day of May, 1874. Upon the occurrence
of a vacancy before the expiration of a term, an appointment shall
be made for the remainder of the term. After the expiration of
the respective terms of office, as above provided, the regular term
of office shall be four years from the 15th day of May in the year
of appointment.

This Section makes the appointment of Commissioners a political one. The
Committee attempted to avoid this great evil by giving the selection of one
Commissioner to the Governor, one to the Chamber of Commerce, and one to the
State Board of Agriculture. The idea of this arrangement was to take these
appointments out of politics, and confer them upon the representatives of the
two great interests which use and sustain the railroads, to wit : Commerce and

Agriculture. But we felt that there would be no responsibility connected with
appointments by those bodies. Both or either could be as easily manipulated
by the railroads as a political convention. Moreover, we were advised by
eminent legal counsel that notwithstanding former legislation of this character
in California, the constitutionality of that mode of appointment is, to say the
least, open to serioiis doubt. Sec. 6 of Article XI of the State Constitution
reads : "All officers whose election or appointment is not provided for by the
constitution, and all officers, whose offices may hereafter be created by law, shall
be elected by the people or appointed as the Legislature may direct." Should
the Supreme Court hold that the last clause of this Section confers on the Leg-
islature merely the power to choose between election by the people and appoint-
ment in the usual way (by the Governor, with the advice and consent, of the
Senate), then the whole bill would fail on the ground of unconstitutionality.
We prefer, therefore, to trust the well tested wisdom and patriotism of our
present Governor than to take this risk. It is to be hoped that he will make
such selections for this office as will approve themselves the fittest for reap-
pointment at the end of their terms. Frequent changes would be almost as
fatal as improper or incompetent incumbency, to the successful government of
our monopolies through the proposed measures. Should this oifice become
merely a political one, this bill would prove a serious injury instead of a benefit
to the public.

Sec. 2. The Commissioners shall hold their first meeting at the
city of San Francisco, on the 15th day of May, 1874, for the pur-
pose of organizing the Board.

Sec. 3. The Board of Transportation Commissioners shall, be-
fore entering upon their official duties, take an oath for the faithful
discharge of the same. They shall have their office in the City of
San Francisco, but may hold meetings in any place in the State
wherever, in the discharge of their duties, such meetings may be
deemed expedient.

*They shall elect one of their number President of the Board,
who shall be authorized to administer all necessary oaths ; and he
is further authorized to issue subpoenas for the attendance of wit-
nesses and the production of papers in all cases arising before the
Board under this Act. A witness disobeying such subpoena shall
forfeit and pay a sum not exceeding one hundred dollars, to be
recovered to the use of the State in a civil action instituted in the
name of the President of the Board. The Commissioners may
make rules and by-laws for their own government.

Sec. 4. The Governor shall have power summarily to remove
any Transportation Commissioner for any of the following causes,
but not otherwise :

*See Pilot Act, California Statutes, 1864, Sec. 3.

1. For absence from the State, exceeding sixty days, except
by leave of the Governor previously obtained.

2. For gross and wilful neglect of duty.

3. For corruption or malfeasance in office.

At the expiration of any term of office the vacancy shall be filled
as provided in Section 1.

The necessity for entrusting the Governor with power of prompt action when
required, has been amply illustrated during the past year in the case of the
State Harbor Commmissioners, and the limitation of this power to removal
for specified causes only, is indispensable to proper efficiency in the administra-
tion of the office of Transportation Commissioner.

Sec. 5. The Board shall appoint a Secretary, at a salary of
two thousand four hundred dollars per annum. They shall also
appoint an Attorney, at a salary of four thousand dollars per
annum, who shall act as the attorney and legal advisor of the
Board. Both the Secretary and Attorney shall serve during the
pleasure of the Board, and their salaries shall be paid in the same
manner as hereinafter provided for the payment of the salai^ies of
the Commissioners.

Sec. 6. The salaries of the Commissioners shall be six thou-
sand dollars per annum, respectively, to be paid by the State of
California in the same manner as the salaries of other executive
State officers. The Board shall also be allowed to expend for rent
not exceeding twelve hundred dollars, and for furniture, stationery,
fuel, lights and incidentals, including the services of experts,
when temporarily employed, the sum of five thousand dollars per
annum, all of which shall also be paid by the State. The Com-
missioners, their Secretary, Attorney, and employees, shall be
transported in the discharge of their duties over the various rail-
roads and steamboats owned by corporations within this State, free
of charge.

These salaries may seem high in the estimation of economical Legislators.
Nevertheless we strongly deprecate their reduction for these reasons.

1st. Any less sum would fail to command the services of thoroughly com-
petent and honest men, and in inferior or corrupt hands the office would be a
curse instead of a benefit to the State.

2d. The duties of the office thoroughly performed will occupy the entire
time of the Commissioners. Should they be obliged to follow other business
also in order to earn a support for their families, it would be at the expense of
the State, their duty whereto would be interfered with by such necessity.

3d. A salary at least equal to that of a district judge, is necessary to render
its recipient independent of the railroads, who may be presumed always ready
to make up any deficiencies in salaries for sufficient consideration.

4th. Six thousand dollars per annum would enable the State to compete with
the United States for the services of the best men in her corps of engineers, a
point which may be of great importance in the proper preparation of such
reports as we contemplate.

*Sec. 7. The annual expenses of said Board of Commissioners,
including salaries, shall be refunded to the State by the several
corporations, associations, and individuals owning or operating
railroads, steamboats and barges in the State, in the proportion of
their respective gross incomes for the year next preceding that in
which the assessment hereinafter mentioned is made. And the
assessor of the county in which the principal office of any such cor-
poration is situated shall, on or before the first Monday in July
in each year, assess upon each corporation its just proportion of
such expenses, to be calculated from the returns made to the Board
of Transportation Commissioners ; and said assessment shall be
collected in the same manner as is provided by law for the collec-
tion of other taxes.

We have copied this provision from the Insurance Commissioner Act of
California ; also from the law of Massachusetts on this subject. It is a just
provision on the principle that the corporations which require regulation by
the State, should pay the expense of that regulation. But we are advised that
it would be unconstitutional, and this objection is raised by the railroads, whose
unwillingness to pay taxes of any kind has been amply illustrated. The
clause quoted in support of this view is in Sec. 13 of Art XI of the State Con-
stitution, " taxation shall be equal and uniform throughout the State," and it
is maintained by the objectors that the assessment of the expenses of the Board
upon the transportation companies would be exceptional and unequal. On the
other hand we have shown in our report that the Legislature has the power
to impose burdens and restrictions upon corporations created by the State, in
excess of those it may lay upon private individuals. Yet upon private business
men a license is levied, which is deemed "equal and uniform," (though un-
equal in amount, and for different branches of business) if paid in proportion
to the amount of business done. Cannot such an assessment as we contem-
plate be deemed to be in the nature of such a license, or, being levied upon all
transportation corporations alike, in proportion to the business transacted, would
it not be "equal and uniform" upon them all within the meaning of the
Constitution ? Wherein would such a tax differ as to constitutionality, from
the various municipal taxes now levied upon vehicles, dogs, sales of liquors,
auctioneers, attorneys, and insurance companies? Even should this Section of
the Bill be decided unconstitutional, we think the remaining sections would
not be affected thereby, for the efficiency of the Board -would remain intact,
though its expenses were paid by general taxation, and not finally collected
from the corporations. We think, however, that under the exceptional powers
reserved to the Legislature over corporations, there is no doubt whatever of the
right of that body to enact this Section as recommended.

f Sec. 8. It shall be the duty of the Board of Transportation
Commissioners, whenever they shall deem it necessary, to inspect

* Massachusetts Eailroad Comm. Statute, June, 1869, Sec. 5.
t Massachusetts Railroad Law, 1869, Sees. 2 and 8.

all railroads, whether operated by steam, horse, or other motive
power, and all steamboat and barge lines within the State, and to
examine the same from time to time with reference to the security
and accommodation of the public ; and whenever, in their judgment
any railroad, steamboat or barge line shall fail, in any particular, to
comply with the laws of this State, or whenever repairs, or change
in rates of fares and freights are necessary, or (in case of railroads)
additional rolling stock required, in order to promote the security,
convenience, or accommodation of the public, the Commissioners
shall inform such railroad, steamboat or barge line, of the improve-
ments or changes which they deem to be proper, by a notice
thereof in writing, left at its principal place of business ; a report
of the proceedings and of the action taken by said railroad, steam-
boat or barge line shall be included in the biennial report of the
Commissioners, to the Legislature.

Sec. 9. Whenever a petition signed in good faith by twenty or
more resident property holders, on or near the line of any railroad,
shall be presented to the Board of Commissioners, praying for the
establishment of a new station, or station buildings, switch, or side
track, the Commissioners shall notify the managers of such rail-
road of such petition, and appoint a time and place for hearing the
same. If on such hearing it shall appear that the public interest
will be subserved by granting the petition, the Commissioners shall
so adjudge, and their award in such cases shall be final. Should
the corporation neglect or refuse to comply with the award of the
Commissioners, it shall be liable to a fine of one hundred dollars
per day, from the time fixed by the Commissioners for the com-
pletion of the work required until such work shall be actually com-
pleted, or until the day of the judgment respectively, to be recovered
to the use of the State by suit instituted by the Attorney of the
Board, in the name of the Commissioners, in any court of competent
jurisdiction.

This Section, is objected to by the railroad people on the grounds that it
is unnecessary, because the interest of the roads is always a sufficient induce-
ment to the establishment of stations for the accommodation of their customers,
and that it is oppressive, because it would subject the roads to expense and
delays, often merely from speculative motives on the part of property owners.
But nevertheless we recommend the Section for the reason that speculative
motives on the part of railroad managers or their friends are charged, especially
on the Visalia division, as having more to do with the location of depots than
the public convenience. Depots create value in real estate. The railroads, if

left wholly free to locate them along the line of their routes, will naturally
seek to place them on their own lands, whether convenient to the public or not.
The above Section can result in no injury to the railroads. It may do much to
protect the rights of the people.

* Sec. 10. It shall be the duty of the Transportation Commis-
sioners, upon the complaint of the Mayor and a majority of the
Common Council of any city, or of the Board of Supervisors of any
county, or on petition signed by at least twenty resident property
holders in any town or township, to make an examination of the
location, or of the condition and operation of any railroad, any part
whereof lies within the limit of such city, county, town, or township.

Before proceeding to make such examination, in accordance with
such complaint or petition, the. Commissioners shall give to the pe-
titioner and the corporation reasonable notice in writing of the
time and place of hearing the same. If, upon such examination,
it shall appear to said Commissioners that the complaint is well
founded, they shall so adjudge, and shall inform the corporation
owning or operating such railroad of their adjudication, and shall
report the proceedings to the Legislature in the manner pres-
cribed in Sec. 8 of this Act.

Sec. 11. Within twenty days after the organization of the
Board, as prescribed in Sec. 2 of this Act, or as soon thereafter
as practicable, the Commissioners shall cause a copy of this Act,
together with a notice of said organization, to be served in writing
upon every corporation engaged in the business of inland transpor*
tation within this State. Within ten days after receipt of such no-
tice, it shall be the duty of said corporations respectively to file
with the Board a certified copy f of all and singular their tarifls
and rates of freight, passage money, commutation rates, and
charges, together with copies of all their rules, regulations, and
instructions to employe's concerning the carriage of persons and
merchandise, as the same were in force on the first day of Decem-
ber, 1873 ; and it shall not be lawful for any of said corporations
to increase any rate of freight or passage, or to raise the classifica-
tion of any species of goods, or to change any rule or instruction
to employes in such manner as to increase the cost of transporta-

* Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 9.
f Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 11.

tion, without the previous consent of the said Board. All reso-
lutions of the Board authorizing increased charges of freight or
passage, or more stringent rules, shall be entered upon the min-
utes, together with the names of the Commissioners voting for and
against such changes, which shall thereupon be duly advertised
at the expense of the corporation benefited thereby, by publication
for thirty days in a newspaper of general circulation in the county
or counties affected by such change, and by posting notices thereof
in all the offices of such corporation where tickets are sold, freights
collected, or goods received for transportation. And no such in-
creased charges shall be allowed to be collected until thirty days
after the approval of said Board ; provided, nevertheless, that any
railroad or steamboat company may issue excursion tickets at re-
duced rates for special trains or boats, or between certain places,
and for a fixed time ; and may likewise make temporary special
rates of freight at reduced prices on specified articles between cer-
tain stations, and for a fixed time, at their discretion ; and a subse-
quent return to the regular rates by such company shall not be
deemed to be an increase of the rates within the meaning of this
Section. But this provision shall not be so construed as to author-
ize any discrimination between persons, either as to rates of freight
or passage money by means of such special rates of freight or pas-
sage ; and all such special reductions shall be communicated forth-
with to the Commissioners, with the reasons therefor.

This Section is framed on the theory that the present average rates of fares
and freights, haying heen fixed by the railroads to suit themselves, is high
enough ; while in reference to the reports of the Central Pacific Railroad, and
the absence of information other than said reports, it is not now possible to say
that said average ought to be reduced. In Massachusetts, the rates of fares
and freights must be filed with the Commissioners, but the Board has no juris-
diction over them. We confer the power of preventing arbitary increase of the
rates, because in California there is no competition (as in Massachusetts)
whereby the roads may check each other in this respect. "We also call attention
to the clause requiring thirty days' notice of increase of rates. At present, the
railroads may not only increase rates, but they especially reserve the right to do
so " without notice to shippers." Hence a great deal of the terrorism they exert
over their patrons. Our Section, however, leaves the roads free to reduce rates
at their pleasure, subject to the provision of our other bill to prevent unjust dis-
crimination. And the proviso at the close of the above Section is believed to
give the railroads all the protection they require against arbitrary rulings of
the Commissioners in this respect.

* Sec. 12. The several transportation companies or corpora-

* Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 11.

tions operating railroads, steamboats, or barges, within this State,
shall at all times, on demand, furnish to the Commissioners any and
all information required of them concerning the condition, manage-
ment, and operation of the railroads and water-craft under their con-
trol respectively, and particularly with copies of all leases, contracts,
and agreements for transportation with express companies or other-
wise, to which they are parties. The Commissioners shall cause
blanks to be prepared, applicable to the several systems of transpor-
tation, proposing questions calculated to elicit facts and statistics
from which may be deduced the results hereinafter specified as
necessary to be accurately known by the people and the Legislature.

Such blanks shall be furnished to the several corporations in sea-
son to be filled in and returned to the Commissioners on or before the
first day of August in each year. They shall be sworn to by the
President or other executive officer, and by the auditor, secretary,
or principal bookkeeper of the corporations making the same re-
spectively. They shall be tabulated by the Commissioners, and the
reports, together with the tabulations thereof and the deductions
therefrom, and the record of all the matters herein required to be
reported to the Legislature, with drafts of all such bills as the
Commissioners desire to recommend for passage, shall be printed
as hereinafter provided, and shall be submitted to the Legislature
on the first day of every session thereof.

Sec. 13. The reports made by the respective corporations shall
exhibit clearly and accurately the following facts, in such form and
detail as shall be prescribed by the Commissioners :

*1. Capital stock.

2. Debt, funded and floating.

3. Cost of road, equipment, boats and property, viz :

Construction of road and branches built by company,
Equipment,

Property purchased and on hand not included in the fore-
going.

4. Revenue for the year :

From passengers,

From freight,

From all other sources.

* Mass. Form.

5. Expenses of operating the road for the year :

Maintenance of way and buildings,
General traffic expenses,
Passenger-train expenses,
Freight-train expenses.

6. Net income above operating expenses, and disposition thereof.

7. Receipts, expenses, net earnings, etc., of passenger depart-

ment.

8. Receipts, expenses, net earnings, etc., of freight department.

9. Receipts, expenses, net earnings, etc., of express department.

10. Description of road or other means of transportation.

11. Roads belonging to other companies operated by this com-

pany under lease or contract.

12. Rolling stock.

13. Mileage, traffic, etc.

14. Classification of business.

15. Freight in tons.

16. List of accidents in California.

17. Statement of each accident.

Sec. 14. In addition to the statement of facts to be reported
by the corporation to the Commissioners, as provided in Sec. 13 of
this Act, the report of the Board to the Legislature shall exhibit
the following :

1st. The actual tonnage handled over and by the water trans-
port system of the State, inland and coastwise, compared with car-
riage by rail over parallel routes.

2d. Maximum and minimum, and average charges and rates
upon travel and freight in this State for different distances, and
under different circumstances.

3d. Classification of freights in this State, as compared with
other States ; the necessity of the same ; whether founded upon
just principles or otherwise; and the expediency of legislation
thereon.

4th. Tabulated comparisons of fares and freights in this State,
with those of other States and countries.

5th. The system and circumstances concerning discriminations
between places in the rates on their respective business, and the

reasons therefor, if any ; whether such discriminations are arbi-
trary or exceptional, or otherwise.

6th. Influence which competition should properly exert upon
business at competing and non-competing points, and experience of
California in this respect as compared with other States.

7th. The proportion of paying to non-paying mileage of rolling
stock, and how much a car or boat must earn per day, as a basis
upon which to establish local or short-time tariffs.

8th. The average movement respectively of local and through
business, both in passengers and freights.

9th. Statement of the several products moved, and comparative
tonnage of raw materials and of manufactured articles.

10th. Relation of freights to values per ton on raw products and
manufactured articles respectively.

11th. Deductions therefrom, to show wherein the tariff of
freights requires re-adjustment, with reference to a fair compensa-
tion to the carrier, and the equalization of freights in proportion to
the values of articles carried.

12th. Proper relations of distance as an element in the cost of
transportation.

lBth. Relation of grades and curves as elements in the cost of
transportation.

14th. Schedule of all defined complaints from individuals or
municipalities of excessive charges or improper discriminations be-
tween places, by railroad, express or steamboat companies, or of
other matters, and the action of the Commissioners and corporations
thereon.

15th. Digest of recent decisions of courts of last resort, defin-
ing rights of passengers and shippers, and of common carriers and
corporations, especially in their relations to the State and Federal
Governments.

16th. Distinct recommendations, and drafts of bills covering
such legislation as is needed to secure prompt, efficient, cheap and
safe transportation facilities, and to more fully define the relations
between customers, merchants and carriers, so that the mutual rights
and duties of the same may be more fully understood.

17th. A statement of the assessments levied under Sec. 7 of
this Act upon the various corporations and persons made liable

thereunder for the expenses of the Board, and of all fines and for-
feitures collected, and the disposition thereof.

Sec. 15. Any transportation company subject to the provisions
of this Act, which shall neglect or refuse to make and file its report,
as provided in Sees. 12 and 13 of this Act, or shall neglect or re-
fuse to answer any printed or written question propounded to it in
good faith by the Commissioners in the discharge of their duties, or
shall neglect or refuse to file its tariffs of freights and fares with the
Commissioners, as provided in Sec. 11 of this Act, shall forfeit and
pay to the State of California the sum of one hundred dollars for
each and every day of such neglect or refusal ; the same to be re-
covered by suit in any court of competent jurisdiction. It shall
be the duty of the Attorney of the Board to bring suit in such
court, when required by the Board of Commissioners ; and any
judgment rendered in such suit shall be for one hundred dollars
for every day of the entire period of delinquency up to the day
of compliance with the law or of the judgment, as the case may
be. All sums recovered under this Section shall be paid forthwith
to the State Treasurer for the use of the State.

Sections 12, 13, 14, and 15 express the main object of the bill. The
State and public are now ignorant of nearly all that ought to be known, in
order to enact wise legislation on this most important subject. Davy Crocket's
maxim, "Be sure you are right, then go ahead," applies with peculiar force
and on a gigantic scale in this connection. If live, competent, and honest
men be appointed Commissioners under this bill, the next and each succeeding
Legislature will be thoroughly informed on every point necessary to intelligent
and sound legislation. At present no reliable information exists, outside of the
railroad companies, who have hitherto fancied (as we believe, most erroneously)
that their interests required concealment. Consequently, whenever called on
for information, they have studiously disclosed only what they deemed best to
secure their own ends. We propose to let daylight shine through the mysteries
of the great corporation. We offer in the succeeding sections prompt and cheap
judicial or executive remedies for every well founded complaint. By this
course all just charges against the roads will be transferred from the newspa-
pers to the Commissioners ; all suspicions will be either verified or dissipated,
and the course of railroad directors proven to be as their enemies assert, or
justified in the light of universal publicity.

Sec. 16. It shall be the duty of the Board of Transportation
Commissioners to invite and receive complaints in writing from any
individual, corporation, or community, or from the representatives
of any county or municipality charging any railroad or steamboat
company with excessive or illegal charges, discrimination, extortion,
or excessive delay in the transaction of ordinary business, or viola-
tion of the duty of common carriers ; and such complaints shall be

considered by the Board as soon as practicable. If the Commis-
sioners shall deem that such complaint is founded upon a misap-
prehension of the mutual rights and duties of the carrier and the
customer, the party complaining shall be notified to that effect
without delay ; but if the Commissioners deem such complaint well
founded, the same shall be officially brought to the notice of the
company complained of, and if no satisfaction be rendered, or the
company neglect or refuse to correct the matter complained of for
ten days after receiving such notice, then the Commissioners are
hereby authorized to institute suit in a court of competent jurisdic-
tion, in the name of the injured party, and at his expense. It
shall be the duty of the Attorney of the Board to prosecute all
such suits when required by the Commissioners, without fee or
reward, and to pay over on demand all sums recovered as damages,
or otherwise, to the party entitled to receive the same.

* Sec. 17. Nothing in this Act contained shall be construed to
affect in any manner or degree the legal duties and obligations of
any carrier, or his legal liability for the consecaiences of its neglect
or mismanagement, whether advised or not by the said Commis-
sioners.

This Section is copied from the Massachusetts Statute. The last clause
may seem harsh — -but as parties injured must have their legal remedy, while
the Commissioners cannot in practice be made responsible for the consequences
of their advice, (else no one would accept the office) we see no cause to vary the
language of the Massachusetts law. It must be borne in mind that this Section
refers to Sec. 8 of this bill, where compliance with the advice of the Commis-
sioners is not made compulsory upon the transportation companies.

f Sec. 18. Whenever the Directors of any railroad company
shall fail to agree with the municipal authorities of any town or city
■as to the route of their railroad in such town or city, either party
may petition the Board of Transportation Commissioners to fix the
route in said town or city, and said Board, after due notice to the
other party, shall hear the case, and shall fix the route in such town
or city. Said Board shall make certificates in duplicate of all
awards made by them under this Section, which shall be certified by
the President and Secretary of the Board, and one of them deliv-
ered to each party to the controversy.

* Massachusetts Kailroad Law, Sec. 12.
f Massachusetts Eailroad Law, Sec. 23.

* Sec. 19. The Board of Transportation Commissioners shall
have power to investigate the causes of any accident occurring on a
railroad or steamboat, which in their judgment shall require investi-
gation.

f Sec. 20. Notice of the occurrence of any accident upon a rail-
road or steamboat resulting in personal injury or loss of life — and of
any accident not so resulting, of which the Board of Transporta-
tion Commissioners shall, by general regulation, require notice —
shall be given to said Board by the owners or operators of the
railroad or steamboat upon which such accident shall have taken
place, within forty-eight hours thereafter ; and such owners or opera-
tors, for each omission to give such notice, shall be liable to a penalty
of fifty dollars, to be recovered as provided in Section 15.

J Sec. 21. A railroad corporation may change the location of
passenger stations and freight depots only upon the approval in
writing of the Board of Transportation Commissioners ; provided,
that, if such stations or depots be within the corporate limits of any
incorporated city or town, the consent of the municipal authority of
such city or town shall likewise be requisite to such change.

This Section is objected to by the railroad managers, on the ground that
should they desire to change a station in a city or large town, the necessary
publicity of these proceedings would so enhance the price of the property to be
purchased for a new location, as to seriously injure the road or prevent the
change altogether ; while, shorild the purchase be made before the application
were granted, they could never know, when buying the land, that they could
obtain consent to use it. Nevertheless we recommend it, for reasons analo-
goiis to those stated in our note to Sec. 9. The public has a deep interest in
the location of depots, especially at those points where business is the largest.
So also have the owners of property, whether located around the old or the new
station. "We think the representatives of the public should be allowed a voice
in a matter so important to all concerned.

§ Sec. 22. Every corporation owning a road in use shall at rea-
sonable times and for a reasonable compensation draw over the same
the passengers, merchandise, and cars of any other corporation au-
thorized by the Legislature to enter with its road upon, or unite the
same with, and use the road of the first-named corporation. If the
corporations cannot agree upon the stated periods at which the cars

* Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 169.
f Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 1Y0.
\ Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 188.
§ Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 212.

shall be so drawn, the time-table to be adopted, or the compensation
to be paid, the Board of Transportation Commissioners, upon the
petition of either party, after due notice to and hearing of the par-
ties interested, shall determine such rate of compensation and fix such
periods and time-tables, having reference to the convenience and
interest of the corporations and the public to be accommodated
thereby ; and the award of the Board shall be binding upon the res-
pective corporations interested therein, until the same shall have been
revised or altered by said Commissioners, or reversed on appeal by
the Supreme Court, as hereinafter provided.

* Sec. 23. If two connecting railroad corporations, owning or
operating roads of different gauges, cannot agree, either as to the
requisite terminal accommodations, or as to the manner in which
or the terms upon which freight and passengers shall be transferred
from one road to the other and forwarded, the Board of Transporta-
tion Commissioners, upon the petition of either party, and after due
notice to and hearing of the parties interested, shall determine
what accommodations are required, and also the compensation to be
paid for the use of the said terminal accommodations, and for the
receiving, transferring, and forwarding of passengers and freight ;
and the award of the Commissioners, subject to the limitations and
restrictions contained in the preceding Section, shall be binding
upon the respective corporations.

f Sec. 24. Any award made by the Board of Transportation
Commissioners in pursuance of the foregoing Sections 22 and 23,
shall be returnable, with the evidence, on the request in writing of
any party affected thereby, filed within thirty days after the rend-
ering of such award, into the District Court of the County in which
the controversy arose, and shall be there subject to revision in the
same manner as if the said Commissioners had derived their power
to act in the premises under the appointment of said Court, with
the right of appeal to the Supreme Court, as in other cases.

J Sec. 25. Whenever the return of any corporation is incom-
plete, defective, or probably erroneous, the Commissioners shall

* Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 213.
f Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 13.
\ Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 215.

notify such corporation thereof, and require such corporation to
amend such return within fifteen days, under the same penalty as
for refusing or neglecting to make returns.

Sec. 26. The Commissioners shall cause to be printed bienni-
ally, such number of copies of their report, not exceeding 2,500,
as they shall deem expedient. Said printing shall be awarded to
the lowest responsible bidder, after advertisement for bids therefor
for thirty days previous to the time fixed for the award ; and the
work must be completed on or before the 1st day of December in
each year in which the Legislature shall assemble. The Commis-
sioners shall cause copies of their report to be delivered as follows :

COPIES.

To the Governor 25

To the State Librarian 20

To the Secretary of State 25

To each Railroad Company 25

To each Steamboat or Barge Company, or owner 5

To the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate 100

To the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Assembly 200

To be by them distributed among the members of the Senate and
Assembly next to convene. The remainder of the copies shall be
distributed at the discretion of the Commissioners.

We propose to relieve the Stati^Printer of the duty of printing this
report, on the ground of economy ; also in consideration of the fact that the
printing of the other reports required by Liw to be made to the Legislature
necessarily crowds the office during the period when this report would be on his
hands.

Sec. 27. Articles 480 and 490, Part IV, Title 3, Chapter 3
of the Civil Code of California, is hereby repealed ; and Article
489, Part IV, Title 3, Chapter 3 of said Code, is hereby amended,
so as to read as follows :

" All railroad corporations must fix and publish their rates of
charges for freightage and fares from one depot or station to another
on their various lines of road in this State, and must furnish printed
or written lists of the same, at a charge not exceeding the cost of
printing, to all applicants therefor."

We recommend the repeal of Article 480, because it provides for an annual
report to the Secretary of State, comprising answers to only eight questions,
and amounting to nothing in the way of information. The necessity for this
Article will be. done away with by our Sections 13, 14, and 15.

We recommend the repeal of Art. 490, because it makes all tickets sold by
the railroad companies good, not only for the day and the distance paid for,

but for intermediate trips, and during six months. The hardship thus imposed
upon the railroads is twofold. First. In authorizing intermediate trips at the
through rate, notwithstanding that the intermediate rates chargable by the
tariff are higher than the through rates : whereby the company is defrauded
of a portion of its regular fares, and speculation in tickets becomes a business.
Secondly. In obliging the Company to be always prepared to carry " stop over "
passengers from way stations, though their trains can only be made up at the
terminal or principal stations. These questions have been exhaustively treated
in the Courts of the older States, and the current of decisions in Courts of
last resort has been uniformly in favor of the railroads. The Article of the
Code in question is therefore contrary to law. See

McClure vs Philadelphia W. & B. R. R. Co. 6 American Reports, 345.

Cluney vs Boston & Maine R. R. Co. 11 Metcalf (Massachusetts) Reports,

121.

Shedd vs Troy & Boston R. R. Co. 40 Vermont Reports, 88.
The Cleveland C. & C. R. R. Co. vs Bartram. 11 Ohio State Reports, 457.
Johnson vs the Concord R. R. Corporation. 46 New Hampshire Reports,
213.
We recommend the amendment of Art. 489 of the Code, by striking out all
that portion (nearly the whole of it) which undertakes to graduate rates of
fares and freights with reference to distance only. The reasons of this appear
fully in our report.

* Sec. 28. The provisions of this Act shall be applicable to
all railroads, steamboats, or barges, now or hereafter to be operated
by corporations, trustees, associations, companies, or individuals in
this State, provided, that any such corporation, association, com-
pany, or individual hereafter operating any railroad, steamboat, or
barge,, shall, before commencing business, file copies of all and
singular their tariffs and rates of freight, passage money, and
charges, together with copies of all their general rules, regulations,
and instructions to employe's concerning the carriage of persons and
merchandise, with the Board of Transportation Commissioners.

Sec. 29. This Act shall take effect from and after its passage.

A.N" ACT

To prevent extortion and unjust discrimination in the rates charged
for the transportation of passengers and freights on railroads
and steamboats in this State, and to punish the same.

The people of the State of California, represented in Senate and
Assembly, do enact as follows :

Section 1. A railroad, steamboat, or barge company shall be
deemed guilty of extortion in the following cases :

* Massachusetts Railroad Law, Sec. 245.

1. When it shall knowingly or wilfully charge, demand, or
receive from any passenger, as his fare from one station or place
to another, any greater sum than is specified as the fare between
those places for the same class of passage, and in the same direc-
tion, in its tariff of fares, on file with the Board of Transportation
Commissioners.

2. When it shall knowingly or wilfully charge, demand, or
receive from any person or persons, as the rate of freight on goods
or merchandise, any greater sum than is specified as the rate for
the like quantity of goods or merchandise of the same class, be-
tween the same places and in the same direction, in its printed
tariff of freights, on file with the said Commissioners.

3. When it shall knowingly or wilfully charge, collect, or
receive from any person or persons, a greater amount or rate of
toll or compensation than it shall at the same time charge, collect,
or receive from any other person or persons, for receiving, hand-
ling, storing, or delivering freight of the same class and like quan-
tity at the same place.

4. When it shall knowingly or wilfully charge, demand, or
receive from any person or persons, any greater sum for passage
or freight than from any other person or persons at the same time,
between the same places, in the same direction, for the same class
of passage, or for the like quantity of goods of the same class.

5. When it shall knowingly or wilfully charge, demand, or
receive, as compensation for receiving, storing, handling, or deliver-
ing, or for transporting any lot of goods or merchandise, any
greater sum than it shall by or through any of its authorized
agents, wherever situated, have agreed to charge for such service
previously to the performance thereof.

Sec. 2. A railroad, steamboat, or barge company shall be
deemed guilty of unjust discrimination in the following cases :

1. When it shall, directly or indirectly, knowingly or wilfully,
charge, demand, or receive from any person or persons, any less
sum for passage or freight than from any other person or persons
(except as in this Act hereinafter provided), at the same time,
between the same places, and in the same direction, for the like
class of passage, or for the like quantity of goods, of the same class.

2. When it shall, directly or indirectly, knowingly or wilfully,
charge, demand, or receive from any person or persons, as compen-
sation for receiving, handling, storing, or delivering any lot of goods
or merchandise, any less sum than it shall at the same time charge,
collect, or receive from any other person or persons for the like ser-
vice, to a like quantity of goods, of the same class, at the same place.

Sec. 3. It shall be unlawful for any railroad or steamboat
company to grant free passes for travel within this State, except
to the following persons :

1st. Directors, officers, agents, and employes of the company
and their families.

2d. Officers and agents of other railroads or steamboat com-
panies, of immigrant societies, and telegraph companies.

3d. Destitute persons.

4th. Ministers of religion and their families.

5th. The members of the Board of Transportation Commis-
sioners for the State of California, their Secretary, Attorney, and
employes, while traveling in the discharge of their official duties.

Every railroad and steamboat company shall keep a record of
all free passes issued by it, and of the several classes thereof,
and of the number of times each pass shall be used, and shall
report the same to the Transportation Commissioners whenever
required.

Sec. 4. Any railroad or steamboat Company that shall be
guilty of extortion, as denned in Section 1 of this Act, shall for-
feit and pay to the person or persons aggrieved, three times the
amount of the damages sustained by him or them, together with
costs of suit, to be recovered in any court of competent jurisdic-
tion. It shall be the duty of the Attorney of the Board of Trans-
portation Commissioners to prosecute all such suits for the plaintiff,
without fee or reward, when instructed so to do by resolution of
the Board.

Sec. 5. Any railroad or steamboat Company that shall be guilty
of unjust discrimination, as defined in Section 2 of this Act, shall
forfeit and pay the sum of one thousand dollars for each offense,
to be recovered on complaint to the Board of Transportation Com-
missioners, by the Attorney of the Board, as in the last Section

provided. One-half of all forfeitures recovered under this Section
shall bo paid into the State Treasury, the other half to the informer.

Sec. 6. Any railroad or steamboat Company that shall issue
free passes to any person or persons other than those specified in
Section 3 of this Act, or shall permit any person whatever to travel
free upon their cars or boats, except upon the exhibition of free
passes issued as in said Section provided, shall forfeit and pay for
each offense the sum of one hundred dollars, to be recovered and
paid over — one-half to the State Treasury, and the other half to the
informer, as in the last Section provided.

*Sec. 7. Whenever it shall come to the knowledge of the
Board of Transportation Commissioners that the provisions of this
Act are violated by any railroad or steamboat corporation in this
State, it shall be their duty to investigate the charge ; and when-
ever, in their judgment the facts warrant prosecution, it shall be
their duty to immediately cause suits to be commenced and prose-
cuted against any corporation which shall have been guilty of such
violation. Such suits may be brought in any County of the State,
through or into which the line of the railroad or other corporation
violating this Act may extend. All such suits shall be prosecuted
by the Attorney of the Board.

Sec. 8. The provisions of this Act shall be applicable to any
railroad operated by Trustees, or to any railroad, or steamboat, or
barge operated by an owner or owners not incorporated.

Sec. 9. This Act shall take effect from and after its passage,

Note. — This Bill is mainly drawn from the Illinois Statute of 1871.
* Illinois Railroad Act of 1811, Sec. 1.

Central Pacific Railroad — Office of the )

Law Department.
San Francisco, Cal., December 23d, 1873. )

C. T. Hopkins, Esq.

Sir : — We have received a copy of your Bills to create
a board of transportation commissioners, and to prevent extor-
tion and unjust discrimination by railroad companies and certain
other common carriers. While you have evinced much care in
its preparation, and may have gone as far as your instructions re-
quire, we think you have not covered the entire field. We have,
therefore, prepared an additional chapter upon the cognate subject
of railroad police, which, like your Bill, has been mostly copied
from the Statutes of Massachussetts. We respectfully ask that it
may be made a part of your Bill. If you think its addition would
be in excess of your instructions, however, we then ask you to re-
port it to the Chamber of Commerce, and recommend that it be
incorporated in your Bill.

Upon examination, we think you will find its provisions not only
beneficial to railroad companies, but the public also. We inclose
a copy. Respectfully yours,

S. W. Sanderson.

AI ACT

To establish a railroad police, and concerning other matters.

The People of the State of California, represented in
Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows :

(a) Section 1. It shall be the duty of the Board of Trans-
portation Commissioners, upon the petition of any railroad corpora-
tion, to appoint as many of the employes of said company as they
may deem proper, police officers, to act as railroad police for the
5

purposes and with the powers hereinafter set forth. Such police
officers shall hold their offices during the pleasure of the Board of
Transportation Commissioners, unless their powers shall be ter-
minated as provided in Section 9 of this Act.

(5) Sec. 2. A copy of the record of appointment of any rail-
road police officer shall be filed by the Secretary of the corporation
upon whose petition such order is made, with the Clerk of each
county, or city and county, through or into which such railroad
runs, and in which it is intended that such police shall act ; and
the filing of such order shall constitute the persons named therein,
railroad police within such counties, or cities and counties.

(c) Sec. 3. Every officer of the railroad police shall, when on
duty, except as detectives, wear a metallic badge in plain view,
with the words " Railroad Police," and the name of the corpora-
tion for Avhich he is appointed inscribed thereon.

(d) Sec. 4. Officers of the railroad police may preserve order
within and about the premises and upon the cars of the corporation
upon whose petition they are appointed ; they may arrest without
a written warrant, all idle, intoxicated or disorderly persons fre-
quenting such premises or cars, and obstructing or annoying by
their presence or conduct, or by profane or indecent language or
behavior, the traveling public using the same, and may take the
persons so arrested to the nearest police station or other place of
lawful detention ; and all such persons shall be deemed guilty of a
misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not ex-
ceeding fifty nor less than five dollars, or imprisoned in the County
Jail at the rate of one day for each two dollars of said fine, unless
the same be paid.

(e) Sec. 5. Whenever any passenger upon a railroad train
behaves in a noisy or disorderly manner, any railroad police officer
may arrest him without a written warrant, and remove him to the
baggage car of such train, where such officer may confine him until
the arrival of the train at some station where he can be placed in
charge of an officer, who shall take him to a place of lawful deten-
tion ; and all such persons shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor,
and upon conviction thereof, shall be punished as provided in Sec-
tion 4 of this Act.

(/) Sec. 6. Whoever without right loiters or remains within
any station house of a railroad company, or upon the platform or
grounds adjacent to such station, after being requested to leave the
same by any railroad police officer, may be arrested by such officer
without a written warrant; and all such persons shall be deemed
guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction shall be punished as
provided in Section 4 of this Act.

(g) Sec. 7. No railroad corporation shall eject any person
from its cars for non-payment of fare, excepting at some passenger
station upon its road. Officers of the railroad police may arrest
any passenger refusing to pay his fare, and may deliver him into
custody at any regular passenger station, and all such persons shall
be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof
shall be punished as provided in Section 4 of this Act.

(7i) Sec. 8. It shall be lawful for officers of the railroad
police to arrest, without written warrant, any person found hidden
or concealed in any railroad car with intent to travel from any one
place to another without payment of fare, and deliver him into cus-
tody at any regular station upon the road ; and all such persons
shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction
thereof shall be punished as provided in Section 4 of this Act.

Sec. 9. Any person who shall purchase of any railroad com-
pany a ticket for a point beyond that to which he intends to go
with intent to sell the same to any other person for use between the
point at which he intends to stop and the point of destination desig-
nated in the ticket, and every person who shall purchase such
ticket of such person shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor,
and upon conviction thereof shall be punished as provided in Sec-
tion 4 of this Act.

Sec. 10. Every person who shall falsely represent the kind or
class of goods or merchandise delivered by him for transportation
to any corporation, association, company, or person operating a
railroad, steamboat or barge line, in the business of common carriers,
with intent to secure their transportation at a less rate or charge
than is fixed by such common carrier for the kind or class of goods
or merchandise to which such goods or merchandise belong, shall

be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof
shall be punished as provided in Section 4 of this Act.

Sec. 11. The compensation of all railroad police shall be paid
by the corporations upon whose petition they are respectively ap-
pointed. And such corporations shall be liable to parties aggrieved
by any official misconduct of such railroad police, to the same
extent as they now are for the torts of agents and servants in their
employ.

Sec. 1*2. Whenever any corporation shall cease to require the
services of any of the railway police appointed upon its petition, it
may file a notice to that effect in the several offices in which notice
of such appointment was originally filed, and thereupon the power
of said officer shall cease.

Sec. 13. This Act shall take effect from and after its passage.

(a) Mass. K. R. Statute, Sec. 197.

(6) lb., Sec. 198.

{d) lb., Sec. 200.

(e) Mass. R. R. Statute, Sec. 203.

(/) lb., Sec. 20(5.

(g) lb., Sec. 205.

(h) lb., Sec. 201.

BY-LAWS

NARROW GAUGE

RAILROAD COMPANY,

List of Officers,

SAN FRANCISCO:

GEO. B. HITCHCOCK & CO., COUNTING-HOUSE STATIONERS

Nos. 413 and 415 Sansome Street, corner Commercial,

1873.

CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY

BYLAWS

\;vB*§ mn

^§^5TPwB^%

'SjF8

NARROW GAUGE

RAILROAD COMPANY.

List of 0

ist of Officers,

SAN FRANCISCO:

JEO. B. HITCHCOCK & CO., COUNTING-HOUSE STATIONERS

Nos. 413 and 415 Sansome Street, corner Commercial,

1873.

OFFICERS— 1872-73.

DIRECTORS :

CORNELIUS COLE San Francisc

M. D. TOWNSEND H^

H. F. WILLIAMS " «•

E. L. TEACEY "

HENEY EAYMOND Alameda Co.

J. D. STEPHENS Yolo Co.

H. J. GLENN Colusa Co.

J. C. TYLEE Tehama Co.

J. N. MONTGOMEEY "

OFFICERS:

COENELIUS COLE Pbesident.:

M. D. TOWNSEND Vice Pbesident.

E. L. TEACEY TbeasubebI

WM. W. MAGAEY SeceetabJ

Wji. S. Watson. .... Chief Engineer*

BYLAWS

l^alifornm fteniral \mw |jauge

RAILROAD COMPANY.

Section 1. The annual meeting of the stockholders nJasttag of

of this Company shall he held at the principal place of stockhold'rs

business of the Company, on the second Wednesday place.

of October in each year, at three o'clock p. m., or at „

such other time as shall be appointed by a resolution

of the Board of Directors, at which an election for Election of

nine Directors shall be held, to serve for the ensuing Directors.

year, and until their successors are elected. Said elec- Time of

tion shall commence and terminate at hours designated election-

by the Board of Directors, and named in the notice

calling the meeting.

Sec. 2. The President, or in his absence, the Vice- , ..

Elections.
President of the Company, together with one Director,

and one stockholder who is not at the time a Director, ^°f^| °

both to be chosen and appointed by the Board of

Directors for that purpose, shall act as the Judges of juages 0f

Election, receive, count and canvass the votes, and elections.

declare the result without delay. The Secretary shall

be tally clerk, and shall keep a regular tally list of all Tally Clerk'

votes cast at said election, and preserve the same in

his office. The vote for election of Directors shall be number of

taken by ballot, and each voter shall indorse on his votes.

ballot his name and the number of votes cast by him. vote by

The said Judges of Election and Secretary, shall, at t)allot-

BY-LAWS OP THE CALIFORNIA CENTRAL

Election of
Directors.

Meetings of
Stockhold'rs

Who to vote.

List of
voters

Office of the
Company.

Fiscal year.

Directors'
Meetings.

Quorum.

Special
Meetings.

Election of
officers by
Directors.

the close of such election certify the result thereof to
the Board of Directors. In the absence of any officer
of election his place shall be filled by the stockholders
present at the opening of the election.

Sec. 3. At all meetings of the stockholders, absent
members may vote, by proxy duly authorized in writing,
signed by the stockholders granting them, and they
shall be filed with the Secretary. It shall be the duty
of the Secretary, previous to every meeting thereof, to
make an alphabetical list of all stockholders, with the
number of votes each is entitled to cast, set opposite
his or her name, and have the same present at such
meeting for the use of the officers thereof.

Sec. 4. The office of the Company, and of the
President, Secretary, Treasurer and Chief Engineer,
with the books and papers thereto belonging, shall be
kept in the City of San Francisco. The fiscal year of
the Company shall commence on the first clay of July,
and terminate on the last day of June, in each year,
and shall be divided into four quarters, terminating on
the last days of September, December, March and
June, respectively.

Sec. 5. The regular monthly meeting of the Board
of Directors shall be held on the second Wednesday of
each month, at three o'clock in the afternoon, at the
office of the Company, unless otherwise specially di-
rected by the Board, and three or more of the Directors
shall constitute a quorum at all meetings for the trans-
action of business. Special meetings may at any time
be called by the President, or any three members of the
Board, to convene at such time and place as may be]
appointed, but it shall require a majority of the whole
Board to adopt any measure.

Sec. 6. There shall be elected by the Directors at
their first meeting after the annual election of Directors,
which shall be within five days thereafter, or at such
subsequent meeting of the Board as said election may
be adjourned to, from among their number a Presi-
dent, a Vice-President and a Treasurer, and also a Sec-

NAKEOW GAUGE EAILEOAD COMPANT.

retary, who need not necessarily be a Director, "who
shall hold their offices for the term of one year, and
until their successors are elected and qualified, unless jj^J of
previously removed, and who shall receive such sala-
ries as may be allowed by the Board of Directors.

Sec. 7. The Secretary of the Company shall per-
form the duties prescribed by statutes; and shall make Ms duties'.
out a quarterly and an annual statement and balance
sheet at the end of each quarter and year, up to and
including the last days of each of said quarters and
year. Showing the financial condition of the Com-
pany at each of said periods, and lay the same before
the Board at the next regular meeting after the expira-
tion of said quarter and year, and perform such other
official duties as may be required of him by the Board
of Directors.

Sec. 8. Certificates of stock shall be issued onlv for „

J Stock certif-

fully paid stock, and shall be of such form and device icate, when

as the Board of Directors shall determine, and each issiieii-

certificate shall be signed by the President and Secre- Form.

tary, and express on its face its number, date of issue, How signed.

the number of shares for which, and the name of the ^ .

What to
person to whom it is issued. The Certificate book contain.

shall contain a margin on which shall be entered the Certjncate
number, date, number of shares, and the name of the Book,
shareholder expressed in the corresponding certificate. Entry in.
The surrendered certificate shall in all cases be can- certificates
celed by the Secretary before issuing a new one in lieu t0 be
thereof. In all cases where a certificate of stock shall
have been issued, no transfer of such stock shall be
made on the stock transfer book until such certificates
shall have been returned to the Company, nor without
the consent of the Board of Directors, and in case of
the alleged loss or destruction of a certificate of stock, Loss of a
due proof of such loss or destruction shall be made. C^11^16-
and a sufficient bond of indemnity against any loss or Proof of
damage the Company may sustain should said certifi-
cate afterwards reappear, shall be executed to the indemnity.
Company and approved by the Board of Directors,

NAKKOW GAUGE KAILEOAD COMPANY.

before a duplicate thereof shall be issued, and before

any transfer of such stock shall be entered on the stock

transfer book.

Certificate Sec. 9. Certificates of stock shall not be transfera-

Transfers. ne> except -with the consent of the Boaid of Directors,

and this condition shall be printed on the shares.
Transfer of ^kc. ^- ^e s*ock °f anv Director shall not be trans-
Directors' ferable on the books of the Company, until he shall
have first given the other Directors the refusal of said
stock.

Skc. 11. These by-laws may be amended or sus-
pended at any time by the Board of Directors.

Stock.

( \

RA1LE0AD POLICY I

CALIFORNIA

ADDRESS OF

iC:

J OH 1ST T. DOYLE, Esq.

BEFORE THE

MmnwB (&liib of Mmfa ($htm $0.

January 18th, 1S73.

SAN FRANCISCO:
PRINTED AT THE WOMEN'S CO-OPERATIVE UNION, 424 MONTGOMERY ST-

1873.

to-

CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY

Railroad Policy of California.

A numerous meeting of farmers and land holders of
the Santa Clara Valley was held at the rooms of the
Farmers1 Club, in the City of San Jose, on Saturday,
January 18th, at noon, to consider the proposal to
build a narrow-guage road from San Jose to Deep
Water, near Alviso. Mr. John T. Doyle, of San Fran-
cisco, was present by appointment, and on being intro-
duced to the meeting by Mr. S. A. Bishop, spoke as
follows :

[Reported by P. J. Malone, Phonetic Reporter.]
Gentlemen :

I have been requested by those who are engaged in the or-
ganization of the Santa Clara Railroad Company to address
the citizens of San Jos6 on the subject of that road. So far
as it affects interests which are merely local, it is a thing
that you must understand a great deal better than I, and
I do not propose to advert to it But any one who has had
any experience of the oppressiveness of the present mode
of conveyance between this town and the Capital — the
mode of bringing produce to market and of conveying pas-
sengers to and from San Francisco — must have become sat-
isfied of the inadequacy of the present accommodation, the
excess of rates paid for them, and of the desirableness of
some additional facilities being afforded by a competitive
line. The reasons which, as I learn, most deter persons
from taking stock in the present enterprise are a doubt, first,
whether the project is one which can successfully compete
with the existing mode of transportation; and, second, as-
suming that it can so compete, whether there is not danger
that it may be bought out, or, in some way or other, neutralized
by the present Railroad ring, and thus you be left in the same
predicament as before. Upon these questions perhaps I can
afford some light, having bestowed on them a good deal of
attention and study, and sought information by every means
at my command, and to them principally I shall address my-
self.

[2]

The project is, to connect the city of San Jos6 with the
deep water of the Bay by a line of narrow-gauge railroad,
and thence to communicate with the city of San Francisco
by a line of steamboats. It is, of course, in the contempla-
tion of the gentlemen who organized the enterprise that the
proposed railroad will be but the stock or stem of a line to
be extended afterwards further up the valley, so as to take
the whole of its produce and convey it to market; and as it
is now evident to all that the leading industry of California is
to be agriculture, most of the considerations affecting the
present enterprise apply to others of like character maturing
in various parts of the State.

This county comprises three hundred thousand acres of
valley land, suitable for the highest class of agricultural
products, and a large part of it is blessed with water in un-
equalled profusion. Its agricultural resources are unsurpassed
by any equal area in the world. It is within an average dis-
tance of about seventy-five miles of San Francisco. Yet you
pay for transporting the produce you raise now, and will
have to pay for the infinite millions of it that can be raised
in the future, exorbitant rates of freight, and your beautiful
and fertile valley remains practically excluded from easy com-
munication with the capital city of the State, merely because
there exists but one inferior road to connect them. That
this state of things should continue merely because you have
not the courage to undertake to build yourselves another,
especially where it can be done at so little cost, would be a
serious reproach to the intelligence and public spirit of the
community.

We all know — it is elementary — that the main cost of a
railroad enterprise is in the bed and superstructure of the
road. That has to be completed before you can move a pound
of freight. Your rolling stock can be increased from time to
time as needed. Now the Almighty has given you a road
bed here for thirty miles of the distance, which costs nothing
to build and nothing to repair.. It is a water-way, unsur-
passed in the world. Water transportation is cheaper and
better than land ; and, therefore, if you can connect this val-
ley with the waters of the Bay, so that a steamboat or barge can
take freight for the remainder of the distance, you have
an advantage over the present road, of at least three to one.
Your own experience of the last season has doubtless made
this plain. Let me tell you, however, if anything be needed
to confirm it, that when this San Jose" railroad was first
built, there was, as you are aware, a little steamboat running
on the bay, connecting with a line of stages to Alviso. It
was slow, and the trade was then not a third of what it has
since become. The business of the railroad, too, was
managed, at that time, on a scale of liberality far greater

[3]

than now, and the line was popular; hence there was less
inducement to buy out an opposition; yet the old San Jos6
Railroad Company paid the little "Sophie McLane," for
many months, $1,400 a month, not to run — to lie idle. That
payment was a clear admission that she had that much ad-
vantage over them in the business, or else the Railroad Com-
pany would not have paid the money; and she must have had
that much advantage in the way of clear profit, for, unles she
could have made that much by running, they would not
have paid it to her to lie still. So that I take it that the
proposition for a competitive road, connected with water
transportation — in which, by the way, you save ten miles of
distance — is on its face so clear and good, that no hesitation
need be felt in adopting it, unless there be good reason to
apprehend that the corporation which controls the Southern
Pacific road is so powerful that it would be impossible to
compete successfully with it ; or that the persons embarked
in that Company would buy out, or, in some way or other,
neutralize the opposition. I think I can convince you that
of either of these things there is no danger.

I understand from gentlemen connected with this enter-
prise, that the road is to be built on a narrow-gauge. I
deem that an essential condition of success, and for reasons'
which I proceed now to give. It has been commonly said
by the advocates of the present railroad monopoly, and the
opinion is reiterated by many persons without reflection,
that narrow-gauge roads answer very well in a mountain
country, or one that is sparsely settled, and where heavy
grades and short curves abound, but that they cannot com-
pete with broad-gauge roads in a valley or a well-settled
country. I believe, gentlemen, there never was a greater
fallacy. I began my investigations on the subject imbued
with that opinion ; merely, in fact, accepting the narrow-gauge
road as better than none at all; but having taken it up with
that impression and sought information from every attainable
source ; read everything that I could find about it, on both
sides of the question, and long and carefully weighed the
argument, I found myself ultimately driven to the con-
viction that, instead of its being true that a narrow-gauge
road cannot compete with one of standard gauge, the con-
verse is the fact, and that the latter cannot compete success-
fully with the former. Having arrived at such conclusion to
my own satisfaction, I feel justified in urging it on others,
and endeavoring to remove any doubts that you may have as
to the propriety of embarking in such an enterprise. I
will mention some of the facts which I believe to be conclu-
sively established in this connection :

First. Narrow-gauge roads can be built much cheaper than
the others ; how much cheaper I will read to you from pub-

[4]

lislied reports ; but that they can be built mucb cheaper you
can readily see, from tbe simple consideration that what enters
into tbe construction of a railroad is iron, wood and labor.
That is about all. Now it is manifest that a rail that weighs
only 30 lbs. to the yard will cost less per mile than one
weighing 50 or 60 lbs. Iron is sold by weight; so many tons
so many dollars. This applies not only to rails, but to the
fastenings, as chairs, spikes, fish-plates, and the iron is a
very large item in the cost. As to timber, the ties of the
narrow-gauge are less in size and less in cost. The price paid
lor ties on the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad was fifty
cents each. I have heard that they since pay fifty-five cents
for similar ones. They are a large square timber, 8 feet long
and 6 inches by 8 thick, necessarily more costly in propor-
tion than smaller timbers. The ties on the narrow-gauge
are lighter and shorter . These, I learn by the actual pur-
chase of those laid down for your horse cars here, can be
furnished for 18 cents each. Grading on the narrow-gauge
also is cheaper, because you make a much narrower road-bed.
The formation surface for a road of the standard gauge would
be 14 feet at least; for one of 3 feet gauge, 9 feet; making
a difference in favor of the latter of a prism 5 feet wide by
the height of the embankment or depth of the cut.

The result of these and similar facts is, as I find stated in
the report of a convention of Civil Engineers and railroad
men, held in St. Louis, in June last, at which this subject
was fully discussed and considered, so decided as to establish
the entire superiority of the narrow-gauge road in point of
economy, both in construction and operation. I can best ex-
emplify this by reading the two estimates given for a road
from Memphis to Knoxville, the one showing the cost of the
structure on a gauge of five feet, (which is the standard gauge
on the southern roads,) and the other on one of three feet,
which has been adopted as the American narrow-gauge. The
engineer's estimates which I read from will give you the
exact difference between the two. The road proposed was
thirty miles long. The items of clearing and grubbing, en-
gineering, right of way, fencing, etc., are the same in each,
or ^substantially so. In ties there is a difference of about
nine thousand dollars; in grading of about sixty -five thous-
and; in the whole cost of the road-bed of eighty-seven thous-
and; in that of the iron of one hundred and forty thousand.
The total estimated cost of the broad-gauge road is $553,441
or $18,450 per mile — that of the narrow-gauge $326,305, or
$10,876 per mile; difference in favor of the narrow-gauge of
$227,136, or $7,572 per mile. With these detailed estimates
before us, and considering the elements that enter into the
construction of a road, we cannot, I think, doubt that the
narrow-gauge roads can be built vastly cheaper than their
rivals. So much for tire construction of the road.

[5]

Second. The rolling stock is also cheaper, for the rolling
stock is composed of the same materials, iron, steel, wood
and labor, and being nruch lighter the amount of labor and
material consumed, and consequently the cost, is naturally less.
A passenger car, for instance, such as you travel in to San Fran-
cisco from this city, will seat 60 persons, and weighs 25,000
lbs. On the other hand, narrow-gauge car seats 45 persons, and
weighs 7000 lbs. There is therefore, a very great difference
in the amount of labor and material between the one and
the other. So the engines and tenders used are much
lighter and result in a similar economy.

Third. These roads are cheaper to operate as well as
cheaper to build, and for this reason : you have lighter lo-
comotives and lighter trains to draw. If you have 45 pas-
sengers in a car which weighs 7000 lbs, add the weight of
the passengers and the weight of the cars, and the result
will give you the number of pounds that the engine has to
draw in order to transport those 45 passengers. Divide this
amount by 45 and you have the number of pounds per pas-
senger. In transportation ivcight means money. Every pound
you draw along a road costs so much money. In the same
way, taking a sixty passenger car on the broad-gauge track,
and adding to the weight of the passengers that of the cars,
and dividing by the number of passengers, you will have
the number of pounds that each one of them weighs. The
difference between these two is found to be, as represented by
this convention of engineers, so great as to prove that the
narrow-gauge road can be operated for fully 45 per cent
less cost than the broad-gauge road.

Fourth. Wear and tear, and consequent repairs are less.
The wear and tear of roads is produced by the impact and
friction of the wheels upon the rails. The force exerted is
immense and the concussion destructive. The wheels and
axles become worn and the rails shivered, laminated and
battered, as you have doubtless often observed when looking
at the surface of a railroad. Besides, the wear from friction
is tremendous — pounding takes place by the jumping of the
cars when in rapid motion. Now the force which attacks the'
rail and cuts it away and wears the wheels is proportioned
to the velocity and the weight of the moving trains. An
engine of 25 tons, tearing over the rails, will produce double
the effect in wearing them out, and wearing out the road-bed,
that one of 12| tons will. Every boy at school understands
that, and hence your wear and tear account on the narrow-
gauge road are vastly less, than on the other; and wear
and tear in railroads is a very large item of expense.
The annual wear and tear of the road-bed alone throughout
the Eastern States, including the New York Central, the
Pennsylvania Central and the great New Jersey roads, and

[6]

others of the first class, average 5 per cent of the cost. I
have no doubt that in California, although our climate is
favorable to railroads, from the fact that we have no severe
frosts, it would be safe to set it down at seven per cent
I base this estimate simply cm the fact that the average in
the XT. S. is only brought down to five per cent by the very
solid character of the structure on the older roads, which have
been long in use and are thoroughly settled. To be safe I will
call the wear and tear of road-bed here six per cent. But of
course 6 per cent on a road costing $11,000 a mile is a very dif-
ferent sum from the same rate on one costing $20,000 amile.
The cost of wear and tear of the superstructure of the road and
of the rolling stock is also diminished on narrow-gauge roads,
and in a much larger proportion, for the weight of the rolling
stock is diminished in a larger ratio than the diminution of its
gauge. From these general facts it is very easy for any man
with a little reflection to perceive that, if the narrow gauge
road is capable of doing the business required, it must be
more economical in its operations than the broad-gauge;
so far, therefore, from it being true that the narrow-gauge can-
not compete with the broad-gauge, the converse proposition
is the fact — the broad-gauge cannot compete with the nar-
row, in any trade which the latter is capable of dome/, any more
than a heavy truck, requiring four horses to draw it, can com-
pete with a light express wagon, requiring only one, where
the express wagon can do the business. If the volume of
freight is so large as to give constant employment to gigan-
tic teams, such as you see hauling frieght in the streets of
San Francisco, I grant it may be the best mode of trans-
portation, but if there is no more freight to be moved
than the light wagon can take, the experience and common
sense of all men teach them that the lightest vehicle is the
cheapest and best. All the carrying capacity which the
road or the truck has, over the actual requirements of the
business, is useless, and the cost of it is wasted.

Now what is the fact as to the capacity of narrow-gauge
roads to do the business ? That you see is the gist of the
whole question. The answer to this inquiry given by engi-
neers is, that a narrow-gauge road has a capacity of doing
three-fourths as much business as one of broad-gauge, and
this appears to me very reasonable, for the width of the
cars is, in round numbers, three-quarters of that ot the
broad gauge. Now, without undertaking to estimate the ut-
most capacity of a broad-gauge road fully equipped, is it not
enough for us to know that there is not a railroad in Cali-
fornia which is doing one-twentieth part of the business it
is capable of ? I made that assertion to a gentleman on the
cars the other evening and he thought I was mistaken; that
the Southern Pacific is at present taxed to its utmost ca-

pacity; saying, that if you want to send freight over it, you
have to bespeak your cars many days in advance. This is
so, as most of you are probably aware, but what is the rea-
son ? It is simply because they have not sufficient rolling
stock.

They have a road that has cost them three millions six hun-
dred and fifty thousand dollars, ($3,650,000) in cash, and they
have rolling stick on it not worth, all told, six hundred
thousand dollars. These figures show clearly why they can-
not do this business, or accomodate their customers. They
advertise one frieght-train a day, and when they have cars,
they send an extra. , Last year their freight-trains ran
but three times a week, each way; this year, in Consequence
of the heavy crops, they send extras as far as they have
the means of doing it. But there is nothing to prevent
their sending twenty freight-trains over the road every day
if they had the necesary rolling stock. It is, therefore, not
lack of capacity of the road, but destitution of rolling stock
that cripples them. Obviously it would have been better
economy for them to have made their road half as capacious,
and invest the difference in rolling stock, instead of build-
ing a road capable of accommodating three or four thousand
cars and doing the whole business over it with one hundred
and fifty or so. They have too much road and too costly,
for the business of this valley, and having put so much
capital into the road, they have not the means to provide ad-
equate rolling stock. There is no due proportion between
their fixed and working capital. There is too much of one
and too little of the other, and hence they are unable to do
the business required, or to do any business cheaply. If
I have not made this distinction between the capacity of the
road and the capacity of the rolling stock on it, plain, I will
recur to it in a few minutes when I come to speak of this
particular concern ; at present, I only glance at it in con-
nection with the general question of gauge, and I trust I
have said enough to satisfy you that, with an adequate equip-
ment of rolling stock a narrow-guage road could transport
vastly more frieght than goes over the present one.

In fact, if you should build a road up this valley of three
feet gauge or even less, I am quite convinced it could trans-
port all the frieght of this valley for the next ten years, and
at one-quarter of the price you are now required to pay for
the service.

A suggestion has often been made, that narrow-gauge
roads are preferable for a mountain country and broad-
gauge for a valley. And this has been repeated so
often and so continually by those whose interests are
bound up in broad-gauge roads, that it has been accepted
as a sort of compromise between conflicting opinions

[8]

by many who, though willing enough to learn the truth,
do not take the trouble to examine for themselves. Thus
numbers are imposed on by it, as I was myself. But let me
ask, outside of the likelihood of grades and curves, what has
the question of mountain or valley to do with it? If the
whole business of the valley can be done over the narrow-
gauge, why is a broad-gauge preferable? Is it any less
economical to save fifteen thousand dollars a mile on your
road, or a dollar or two per ton on your freight, in the valley
than in the mountains ? I confess I cannot see it.

But even if this proposition were as true as it is fallacious,
I am of opinion it would be better for us in California to
adopt the narrow-gauge, for the reason that fully 4-5 of our
State is a mass of mountains; and, on general principles, the
less should yield to the greater. At present, we have broad-
gauge roads in our valleys, and no roads whatever in our
mountains. We should have a system of roads applicable to
both valley and mountain, not feeding the present monopoly
or strengthening its rapacious and oppresssive hands, but
competing with it. Of the superiority of the narrow-gauge
over the broad-gauge, therefore, for this State in particular,
I cannot entertain a doubt.

I have given you now, gentlemen, general reasons in favor
of narrow-gauge roads, namely : that they are much cheaper
to build, and very much cheaper to operate, and, therefore,
they can furnish transportation at vastly*cheaper rates. But
I desire to lay before you, not only the reasons for that con-
clusion, but to give you also the general testimony which
exists in support of it, consisting of the judgment of
scientific men and actual experience.

As to the latter, I believe I may say that the unanimous
testimony of all the experience on this subject is in favor of
the narrow-gauge road. Many roads have been altered by
reducing the gauge, not one by enlarging it. No engineer
has ever advised such a step. Let me recall to your recollec-
tion an outline of the history of this question of railroad
gauges. You are probably all aware that 4 feet 8.^ inches,
was adopted by the merest accident. It is related that,
when laying down the first railroad track, the question arose
as to what distance apart the rails should be laid; Stephen-
son, the first man who laid a railroad down, told them to
measure the width between the wheels of an ordinary coun-
try wagon, and to be guided by that. They found it to be 4
feet 8 inches and a half, and so laid the rails at that distance.
The first road having been laid on that gauge, others were
built on the same, and so, without any previous investigation,
what is called the standard gauge came to be adopted. But
is there any magic in that particular and exceptional
measure ? It -would be difficult to believe so, and indeed no

[9]

one pretends there is. It was adopted merely to conform to
the ordinary wagons of the country, and under an idea
that vehicles like them would be run over it. After some
roads had been built in England, others were laid down
upon the same gauge, simply because it had already been
adopted, and it facilitated connections.

When they built the Great Western Road, extending
through a country abounding in population and resources,
and terminating in the largest city of the civilized world, they
concluded to lay it down on a gauge of 7 feet. They did so,
and worked it for years. They had sumptuous cars and fine
space; but, although the road did an enormous business, the
management was economical and everything was done to
make it pay, the Great Western road never made a farthing
for its stockholders. This strange anomaly, after going on
some time, led to enquiry as to why the road did not pay.
And then, for the first time, the question of gauges received
scientific investigation. The solution of the problem was
not difficult to competent engineers: their wide-gauge road
required enormous cars, and these cars required a monstrous
engine to draw them. The wear and tear and running ex-
penses were excessive, and the remedy suggested was to re-
duce their gauge to that of other roads. They did so, and
the remedy was found effectual.

In the same way 4 feet 8 \ was generally adopted in the
United States, simply in imitation of the English roads. The
projectors of the N. Y. & Erie Railroad, however, took up,
for some reason, the same idea as those of the Great West-
ern of England, and laid it on a six feet gauge. The
State of New York granted them a subsidy of three millions
of dollars, and the road, I think, was finished about 1845. It
extends through a fine agricultural country, connects the
waters of Lake Erie with those of the Hudson river, and is
one of the four great highways to the West. It has had able
management and an enormous business, but has never, to
this day, divided to its stockholders the first cent of profit.
On the same gauge of six feet the Ohio and Mississippi Koad
was built. It extended across from Cincinnati to St. Louis,
and it had a like experience. The Ohio and Mississippi Com-
pany, however, profited early by the experience of others as
well as its own, and finding it could make no money, reduced
its gauge. It was on that road was performed that marvel of
organized labor and skill which, in the space of a single day,
altered the gauge of the whole line of road — over 300 miles
in length. The Erie Road has been in operation since 1845
— some 28 years — and after an exhaustive experience of
calamity, has finally decided to apply the same remedy, and
is now about to expend ten millions of dollars to alter its
road and rolling stock and reduce it to the smaller gauge.
2

[ io ]

There is no magic, as I said before, in the 4 feet 8f . It
was accepted as a lucky hit, and aU agree that it proved bet-
ter than anything wider; but it does not follow that it is bet-
ter than anything narrower. The contrary would be the
natural inference.

A few years since an engineer named Spooner, having to
construct a short railroad in Wales, at a place where it was
impossible to lay down a 4 feet 8J inch track, was forced to
adopt a narrower gauge. His object was to connect a slate
quarry with tide-water, and he thought a two-feet road would
be better than none. He probably had no idea at tne
time of the results his enterprise was to lead to ; but he built
the road. It was laid down on a gauge of one foot eleven
inches and a half (1 ft. 11^ in.) and has been operated for
some years. The wonderful success of that enterprise, the
amount of work it has done, the speed attained, the curves
and grades it proved capable of surmounting, and the cheap-
ness of its construction and operation, have created a revolu-
tion in railroading; they have opened the eyes of science, like
a revelation, and established the fact that a radical error has
been committed in all our railroad gauges.

"Without wearying you with details of the matter, let me
state, briefly, that commissions of competent scientific men
by the various European Governments, to examine the ques-
tion of railroad gauges. They witnessed the performances
of this little Welsh road. They traveled over it at forty
miles an hour, taking grades and curves absolutely impracti-
cable on a broad-gauge road. It was approved in terms of
the highest laudation by all, Eussian, Swedish, French and
English, and the stockholders were not unfavorably im-
pressed by the fact that it paid them 14 per cent, per annum
dividends, or fully three times the rate of interest current in
that country.

I have said that scientific commissions were appointed
by these different European Governments to investigate the
question of railroad gauge. The object was to attain the
maximum of utility at the minimum of cost. I need not tell
you how thoroughly subjects of this kind are treated in
Europe in such cases. The inquiry is made exhaustive in
all respects, and the results arrived at are entitled to the very
highest weight and consideration. They all concurred in
recommending the narrow gauge. The Eussian and Swedish
Governments adopted three feet six, (although the former
had then in operation a long line of road built for them by
an American, and on our standard gauge,) and they have
since built their roads of that width. The English Govern-
ment had the question presented to it under very peculiar
circumstances, whichtgave especial value to its determination.
They had, it seems, laid out an extensive system or network

[11]

of railroads in British India, and had actually constructed
three thousand miles of them. The experience of the
Sepoy rebellion, the gigantic proportions it attained, and the
calamities that resulted from the want of rapid communica-
tion in that country, rendered such a railroad system ne-
cessary to the Government, and the Government undertook it.
In view of the climate of the country and the nearly level
character of the great alluvial plains which form the valleys
of the great rivers of India, the Ganges, Indus, Bramahputra,
&c, a gauge of five feet six was adopted, and, as I said, they
built and put in operation three thousand miles of roads on
it. So great, however, was the cost of the roads and their
equipment, and, worse still, so excessive was the cost of
operating them, that they were constrained to reconsider the
whole question ; they found that, if they constructed the
rest of their system on that gauge, they would simply bank-
rupt the Indian Government. With all its resources, and
though it has been for a century the great source of wealth
to England, it could not stand the exhaustion of operating
18,000 miles of railroad built on that gauge. They, therefore,
had to halt, and either find a better and less expensive gauge,
or abandon the proposed system of railroads. Again, the
inquiry arose, what gauge will give you the maximum of ben-
fit with the minimum of cost ?

A scientific commission was appointed to investigate it,
and it was discussed thoroughly for over a year. Every
opinion which could find an advocate had a hearing. There
were not wanting some to propose four feet eight and a
half. It was the standard gauge of the mother country, and
that alone, with the people as conservative as the English,
was enough to insure it a preference over anything not clearly
better than it. There were material interests, too, en-
listed in its favor for the machine and car-shops, locomo-
tive works and the like, were laid out to build on that
gauge, and naturally favored it. But after full and careful
examination, such as is there always given to a question of
such moment, especially where it affects the leading interest
of the British Empire, the decision was in favor of the nar-
row gauge. The standard guage presented no advantage in
the way of connection, and consequently had to stand upon
its absolute merits, and it was soon found to have none, and
was dismissed. The controversy was, ere long, narrowed
down to about somewhere between two feet nine and
three feet six. Each of these had earnest advocates.
The English Government finally, adopted 3 feet 3 as the
gauge for the Indian roads and on that the residue of them
are being built now. I will add that from all I read of that
discussion, and I read all that I could lay my hands on, I
was impressed with the belief that three feet would have

[12]

been adopted, but for the fact that the roads were wanted for
military as well as commercial purposes, and that odd three
inches presented advantages to the former in the transporta-
tion of cavalry, artillery, live stock, &c.

In this country three feet has been adopted as the standard
narrow-guage, and I think there are controlling reasons why
it should be adhered to in California.

So far, gentlemen, I have presented this question of rail-
road gauge on its general merits; there are, however, special
considerations applicable to our own State, and to the par-
ticular enterprise now before you, which make the matter
still more plain.

In any business wherein you seek to compete with a rival,
especially if it be already established, the first condition of suc-
cess is to be able to produce what you offer to the public, at a less
cost than he can. If you propose to manufacture goods of any
kind, or offer your services to the public in any capacity, and can
effect such economies in your business, that prices which will
leave you a profit will cause your competitor to run to a loss,
your success is assured. He is at your mercy In Califor-
nia the people cannot, I think, build broad-gauge roads to
compete successfully with the existing ones. They involve
too much capital, and are too expensive to run. In fact,
there is not business enough to give full employment to the
present roads; nor is there likely to be for twenty-five years
to come. The present companies have, however, committed
the error of building roads entirely too large in their capacity
and too expensive in their structure for the wants of the
State. That error we should avoid. Even if this were oth-
erwise we could not compete successfully with them on their
own gauge, for they have occupied the principal routes in
advance, and are from fifty to a hundred miles ahead of us
on each of them. They can keep that advance, and if our
running expenses should equal theirs they would have a con-
stant advantage over us. We must, therefore, of necessity,
adopt the cheaper road. Taking the case of this valley as
an illustration, let us see what conditions it presents. The
line with which you have to compete is the Southere Pacific
Railroad. In making comparative estimates between it and
a competing road, we are fortunately on solid ground, for its
history and particulars are well known to us. The road com-
pleted from San Francisco to Gilroy cost its present propri-
etors, Messrs. Stanford & Huntington and their associates,
$3,300,000. That is, they paid three millions and a quarter for
the road, and a commission of fifty thousand dollars for nego-
tiating the purchase. Some smaller sums were also paid to
the persons who formed the original organization, amounting
probably to from fifty to eighty thousand dollars. Not know-
ing the exact figure I set it down at the minimum of $50,000.

[13]

They then extended the road from Gilroy to Hollister and
Salinas at a cost of not less than eight hundred thousand
dollars, and perhaps a million more. It is safe, probably, to
call it nine hundred thousand. The road, therefore, stands them
in $4,250,000. Their own statement of its cost down to Jan-
uary 1, 1872, as published in Poor's Railroad Manual, is over
$9,800,000; but I will not do them the injustice to believe
their own figures, but rather adopt the known facts.* The
road-bed and superstructure are worth about two million
dollars, and the rolling-stock, taken from their sworn state-
ments on the assessment roll, about six hundred thousand
dollars more. They cannot borrow money at less than one
per cent per month, and the wear and tear of railroad and
rolling-stock will be fully up to the average of roads in the
United States ; hence they have to meet, as fixed annual ex-
penses, the following:

Interest on cost of the property $510,000

Wear and tear of road-bed and superstructure . 150,000
Wear and tear of rolling-stock 100,000

In all $760,000

Which sum, added to the running expenses, will give the
cost to them of transporting the aggregate of their freight
and passengers over the road.

Now suppose you build a narrow-gauge road from a point
near Alviso up the valley and over the same ground, and let
us compare figures. It appears from the reports of engineers
that such a road can be built and equipped for $14,000 per
mile, but I will call it $16,000 for safety. The total distance
will be 94 miles, and the cost $1,504,000, or, in round num-
bers say a million and a half. Wear and tear on a narrow-
gauge road are, as I have pointed out to you, much less, by
reason of its lighter equipment, but I will count them at the
same rate as the broad-gauge. Tour fixed expenses would be :

Interest on cost, at 1 per cent, per month $180,000

Wear and tear of road and superstructure 60,000

Wear and tear of rolling-stock 65,000

In all .1305,003

* The financial statement of the Southern Pacific in the " Bail-
road Manuel " for 1872-3 is a curiosity. It gives :

" The capital stock paid in .' $8,404,800.

" Bonds issued to date 5,750,000.

Making $14,154,800.

S^- Cost of the road, $9,825,160.76 ! ! !

This precious document bears date January 1st, 1872. Besides
changing the cost of the road at about two and one-half times the
monstrous price they paid for it, it shows, that they must either have
taken the stock and bonds at an enormous depreciation, or else, that
the company has several millions of dollars on hand.

[14]

To these amounts must be added the cost of the steamboat
service between Alviso and San Francisco. I shall set this
down at the sum you can charter the boats for, say two boats
at $1,500 per month each, which is more than you need pay.
This amounts in a year to $36,000, making a total of 341,000
per year for fixed expenses, against $760,000; a difference of
$419,000 per year, or say $35,000 per month, against the old
Company.

You understand now, gentlemen, why passage and freight
are so excessively high, and must ever remain excessively
high on this road. Its owners have to charge 419,000 dollars
a year extra on the aggregate of their freight and passage-
money, by reason of the expensive gauge, they have adopted,
and the excessive price they paid for their very inferior road*
So much for fixed expenses. You would have an advantage
of $35,000 per month over them, even supposing your running
expenses equal to theirs. But, in fact, the greatest superior-
ity which the narrow-gauge road has, is the economy of its
running expenses. The amount of dead-weight, as it is
called, carried on broad-gauge roads is something enormous,
and is the great source of their expense. You understand,
of course, that the weight of the train is what tells, in the
cost of transportation, and it is made up of the weight of the
rolling-stock and of the load carried. The former is called
dead-weight, the latter live-weight; both cost equally to
transport, but the latter alone pays the Company. To illus-
trate this excess of dead-weight on broad-gauge roads by a
familiar experiment, I yesterday morning counted the
passengers on the train from this city to San Francisco. I
counted them at Belmont, that being half the distance, on
the assumption that I should thus get the average of the
trip; I found them to be 34. The train consisted of locomo-
tive and tender, baggage car and two passenger cars.

The passenger cars, lam told, weigh 25,000 lbs. .50,000

The baggage car 20,000

The locomotive and tender 50,000

In all, of dead-weight 120,000

The 34 passengers, say 150 lbs. each 5,100

Total weight of the train ; 125,100

Of which 120.000 was dead-weight, and 5,100 live; so that,,
dividing the whole weight by 34, the number of passengers,
each passenger weighed, for all practical purposes, 3,720
pounds !

Now assume the same passengers travelling on a narrow*
gauge road, and observe the difference ;

[15 ]

Two passenger cars at lbs. 7,000 eachl4, 000

The baggage car 6,000

Locomotive and tender 25,000

The passengers, as before 5,100

In all 50,100

Or 1,474 pounds each.

In the one case, for every passenger, weighing 150 lbs., the
company pays for transporting 3,720 lbs.; the other, for only
1,474 — a difference of over a ton per passenger. Upon the
34 pasesngers, the difference is 37g tons. Reckoning the
cost of transportation atl| cts. per ton per mile, you will find the
difference of cost on each trip to be $28 in favor of the
narrow-gauge, and making three trips each way per day, as
they do, the total difference for dead-weight or passengers
would be $168 per day.

I don't of course put forth this particular instance as an aver-
age of their business. It is merely an instance taken at random,
for the purpose of illustration. The established fact is, that
narrow-gauge roads carry so much less dead-weight than those
of broad-gauge that they can make full profits at rates .of
transportation which are less than cost to the others.

As it is (Jifficult to follow figures and calculations into
any detail in such a discussion as the present, I will pur-
sue this branch no further now, but will hand to Mr. Re-
porter some tables compiled from authentic sources, and
submitted to the railroad convention which I mentioned, and
which any who desire can examine at their leisure.

To conclude, then, the reasons why I deem it an indispen-
sible conditions of competing roads that they be of narrow-
gauge are as follows :

1st. That single track narrow-gauge roads, (3 feet, ) with ad-
equate equipment, can do three-fourths of the business those
of standard gauge can.

2d. Their original cost, and hence their interest account,
is much less.

3d. The same is true of wear and tear, or maintainance
and repair account.

4th. Their running expenses are much less, and less in
proportion to the work done, than those of standard gauge.
That is, it costs less per ton to transport over them.

5th. Our roads of standard gauge now built are capable
of doing twenty times the present business. Hence nar-
now-gauge roads can fill all our requirements for many years
to come.

6th. For these reasons, instead of narrow-gauge roads
being unable to compete with those of standard gauge, it is the
latter which cannot compete with the former, any more than a

[16]

large four-horse truck, c ipable of carrying four tons, can com-
pete with a light one-horse express wagon, where the latter
has capacity to do the whole business.

7th. California is mainly a country of mountains ; we
have one large and half a dozen smaller valleys in the State;
but valley land is the exception, and is not as one to five of
the productive acreage of the State.

8th. The greater interest should control the less. Better
by far make double track roads in the valleys wherever needed,
and conform their gauge to what the mountains require, than
have wide-gauge roads in the valleys and none in the
mountains.

In addition to what I have said in support of them, derived
of course from reading and study alone, I have taken the
opportunity of a recent correspondence with * an eminent
iron-master in the East to obtain his views. He is a gentle-
man, whom I take to be the best and most thoroughly in-
structed on this whole business in the United States : not sim-
ply as an engineer but as a capitalist, frequently called upon to
consider questions of railroad economy in connection with the
furnishing of iron and making advances to companies. He
is also as distinguished for high integrity of character and
moral worth as for his intelligence and information, and his
judgment, therefore, commands the highest confidence. I
especially consulted him on a doubt, suggested by a friend,
whether the bonds of a narrow-gauge road could be readily
negotiated. Capitalists, we all know, get their advice on
such subjects from the most competent independent
sources, and look at the question from a merely financial
point of view. If there is a weak side to any proposition
they infallibly find it out. I, therefore, feel confirmed in my
deductions by learning from my correspondent that the bonds
of such a road will be " quite as available as those of a broad-
gauge road." I have since written to him again, stating the
conclusions arrived at in the eight propositions I have
just repeated to you, and asked his opinion on them. "When
received I shall take occasion to communicate it to you.*

The figures I have laid before you, gentlemen, show that
the Southern Pacific Railroad Co. are in the situation of a
storekeeper who owns or hires a store, the cost of which is
three millions six hundrod and fifty thousand dollars, and
having to pay interest and taxes on that amount, or a rent

* The answer to my enquiry, received since the meeting, is as fol-
lows: " narrow-gauge railroad. Your positions are all correct; the
" only argument on the other side is the advantage of connections with
" the existing gauge of 4 feet 8)£ inches, you must judge of the value
" of this yourself."

To the people of this State, I judge it to be of no value whatever.

[ 17]

that is equivalent thereto, has but six hundred thousand dol-
lars of active capital to do business with. Oppressed by
his monstrous interest account, he must make excessive
charges on all his goods in order to meet expenses. At
such an establishment you never can buy cheap. If his ri-
val can do the same amount of business in a store costing
but a million of dollars, and keeping down expenses in pro-
portion, is it not clear that he can undersell him on every-
thing ?

I have dwelt long on the superority of narrow-guage
roads, because I am satisfied that their construction is the
true solution of railroad difficulties in this State. It is policy
for the farmers, miners and storekeepers of the interior, as well
as for the importers, merchants and manufacturers of the city.
Narrow-gauge roads mean cheap transportation, and cheap
transportation to and from tide-water is the interest of the
whole State, and of every interest in it, except the present
railroad combination. Regardless of everything save their
greed for personal gain, they have, in pursuit of it, declared
war upon the Citj of San Francisco, while they oppress the
State at large by their monstrous exactions. The people
of the City have at last become aroused from their lethargy,
and are willing to furnish money to aid rival enterprises. If
you tako up the project with earnestness, you can obtain
aid from the city, and you have success within your grasp.
I know no present enterprise in California possessing more
merit . The water part of your route saves ten miles of the
distance to market, and saves all cost of wear and tear of
road and rolling-stock over it . You can put wheat for ex-
port alongside the ship by barges, and save all drayage and
wharfage; and you can transport the whole products of the
valley to market at rates which will pay your company a
handsome profit, and save to the farmers a dollar per ton on
every ton of wheat raised here.* Santa Clara County would
save, by constructing such a road, the whole cost of it, inside
of four years. I have no doubt that similar conditions to
those existing here, are presented in the other sections of
the State, wherever navigable water is accessible. The ex-
isting roads are on too large a scale, for the wants of the
State and are so weighed down by debt and interest that they
cannot transport cheaply. The true railroad policy of the

* From Chicago to New York is 1,200 miles by rail; the cost of
transporting a ton of wheat from the one city to the other, in winter,
with the canals closed is $12.00 currency, or a cent per ton per mile. At
tbe rates pa'd over the S. P. R. R , the same service would cost §6'.). 00 in
gold. Railroad men claim that their work can be done as low in Cali-
fornia as in the East. If so, what a monstrous exaction are the people
of this valley submitting to ?

[18]

State and of the City of San Francisco is narrow-gauge
roads in the interior, and water communication on our bays
and rivers, and I would that the feeble words I utter here
could be heard by the injured people of the San Joaquin
and Sacramento Valleys, and serve to encourage them in their
efforts in that direction.

It remains to consider the supposed danger that the
present enterprise and similar ones throughout the State may
be bought up and controlled by the present monopoly; and that
I trust to satisfy you is illusory, for the simple reason that
they cannot afford to do it. They cannot afford to, first, be-
cause they have not the money, and, second, because to do so
would be to affirm, in the most conclusive way, the superiority
of the narrow-gauge over their own, and so invite the con-
struction of such roads in opposition to them, at all points.

To say that they cannot do it for want of money, may seem
a bold assertion, but have you ever watched their mode of
buying or building additional railroads? I only know it
from reading the papers; but just as you might, by carefully
feeling the outside of a man's coat, safely pronounce that he
had a pistol in his pocket, so, by watching the published pro-
ceedings of this railroad concern, you can divine their interior
movements. This is the way I read them : When they have
decided on building a new piece of railroad (and the same
method applies to purchase as to construction) they organize
a company for the purpose, define the termini and route, and
file their articles. The stock is subscribed for by Messrs.
Stanford, Hopkins, Huntington, &c, and they become the
directors. Whenever the proper time arrives, stockholders'
meetings are called, and the new Company is consolidated
with the Central Pacific Company, under the name of the lat-
ter. Now there are mortgages on the Central Pacific Eoad
to a certain amount per mile, on all of it west of the
base of the Sierra Nevada. The newly consolidated enter-
prize comes within this category, and they are straightway
authorized to issue bonds on the new road, to the extent of
so many thousand per mile, wherewith to get the money to
build it, or, if purchased, to pay for it. Long since these
mortgage bonds were put on the market in New York, and,
by careful puffing, sold at a good price. They now stand at
a little over par in New York, and it is part of the managers'
policy to keep them there, by careful attention to the market.
They can sell of these bonds a half a million a week in New
York, without any effort, and so they have in effect, a loan, of
so many thousand dollars per mile on every mile of road they
can build under the name of '" Central Pacific." But the name,
you observe, is essential to the success of this financial
scheme. The road must be part of the Central Pacific Boad.
or the plan does not work. Now the gauge of the Central

[ 19 J

Pacific is fixed by Act of Congress at four feet eight and a
half inches. Hence, if they want to purchase a narrow-gauge
road, their ordinary resource for money wholly fails them.
Instead of buying for credit, or buying with borrowed money,
they must buy for cash and must get the cash, on new and
different securities, which they cannot do, as every one knows
who has any acquaintance with their financial condition.
That is reason number one.

But even if they had ample means to do so, people in their
position could not afford to buy off an opposition narrow-
gauge road. For it is certain that one of these two antag-
onistic gauges is very much superior to the other. If the
narrow-gauge road can do the work required of it, and be
operated so much more cheaply, as scientific men assure us,
then it has a great and clear advantage over the other.
If, on the contrary, it cannot do the work and cannot be
operated more cheaply, then it will be unable to compete
with the existing roads, and, in the contest, it must go under.
So that one of two things is inevitable. It must be either a
great success or a great failure. If the latter, there is no
motive for the purchase. If the former, there is no danger
of it, or to buy it out would be the clearest confession of its
superiortiy a confession which they dare not make. For you
will observe that they have built and control some fifteen hun-
dred miles of broad-gauge roads in this State and Nevada.
They have borrowed and expended on them enormous sums of
money, some hundred and twenty millions of dollars, ac-
cording to their own published accounts; all that money is
invested on the faith and affirmance that 4 feet 8| inches is the
proper railroad gauge, and is not exceeded in advantage by the
cheaper three-feet road They are, therefore, the last men in
the country who can afford to admit the contrary. They are in
the predicament of the man who had sworn so often that the
horse was fifteen feet high that he had to stick to it to the
end and at any cost. Believe me, gentlemen, when-
ever competing narrow-gauge roads begin to be built in Cal-
ifornia, Ir. Stanford and his associates will not be in the
field as purchasers, but as sellers, and you will find their
broad-gauge roads for sale. Already, it seems to me, I can
see the dawn which precedes that day. Down to a few
months since they were buying everything in the way of a
railroad in the State. Their latest purchase was that from
Petersburgh to Donahue. After purchasing, they extended
it several miles. That road is threatened with an opposition
by the North Pacific Coast road, which is a narrow-gauge.
Its contracts are already let, and part of its iron is now in San
Francisco, and already the air is filled with rumors of a resale
of the broad-gauge line !

If you want to see clearly what a man is likely to do under

[20]

given circumstances, put yourself in his place, and study
carefully what you would find your interest then to do.
Owning the Stanford roads, fifteen hundred miles in length,
and costing a hundred and twenty millions of dollars, do you
think you could afford to buy a little narrow-gauge rival road?
What would you do with it when bought ? If you continue
to operate it, would not that be a pretty clear admission of
its superiority, and so encourage the building of others in
other parts of the State ? And unless you continue to oper-
ate it, your only other course is to destroy it. You cannot
use it, or even its material, in connection with your broad-
gauge road, for its rails and fastenings are too light, its ties
too short and its rolling-stock too narrow; so that you buy
it and pay the value of it, complete, and go to the expense of
tearing it up, to sell the rails for old iron, the ties for cord-
wood, and the cars for pig-pens, or some such use, leaving the
right of way to lapse to the riparian owners by non-u^er.
Does it not strike you that such a course would be the
strongest possible affirmation of the superiority of the narrow-
gauge road, and a direct invitation to build another and more
of them ? It seems to me so.

The illustration and apprehension founded on the purchase
of opposition steamboats or stage-lines, which we have so
often witnessed, has no application to rail-roads. The for-
mer are transitory, and, when bought off a particular route,
can be employed elsewhere; not so a railroad; it is, when
once constructed, as much a feature in the geography of the
country as a water-course. If used, it remains, from its own
nature, competitive; if unused, you must, to get anything out
of it, take it to pieces and sell the material, throwing open
the right of way to others, with an invitation to build again,
and to build similar roads all over.

These are some of the reasons that convince me that there
is no danger of the present railroad proprietors buying our
narrow-gauge roads, and 1 think they are satisfactory.

Some one may ask what interest I have in this matter to
induce me to come here by appointment and address this
body. My answer is this : My interests are in the city of
San Francisco; they are identified with its welfare and pros-
perity, Those in control of the present railroads have made
an attack on that city, by first possessing themselves of every
natural approach to it, and then attempting, by an unnatural
concentration of all their roads at another point, to build up
a rival city on land largely owned by themselves. They are
prostituting the use of the railroads whereof they are trus-
tees to their personal and private advantage. They propose,
so far as they possess the power, to destroy the City of San
Francisco under the pretext that it is on the wrong side of the
bay; but in reality because they own land on the other side.

[21 ]

They have received from this State a munificent donation of
lands and privileges, expressly on the condition and as the
consideration for making the terminus of their roads in the
city and approaching it by a continuous line of rail, and hav-
ing taken the price in advance, they unscrupulously evade
the performance of their engagement. They are even now
before Congress lobbying for a grant of Goat Island as a
substitute for the termiius they promised the people, and
were paid in advance for making. Having taken an active
part in resisting this nefarious scheme, I have been naturally
led to reflect a good deal on the most available means of
competing with its promoters and destroying that inordinate
concentration of power which they now wield in this State;
a power which corrupts all branches of the public service,
an I threatens, unless checked, to overmatch that of the State
itself. My conclusion is, that to do so we must promote all
enterprises promising cheaper transportation between the
city and the interior. There all our interests, those of city
and country, lie together. I am satisfied that the way to
accomplish it is to build narrow-gauge railroads in the inte-
rior, communicating with the great water-ways that already
exist. Steamboats and barges on the rivers and bay, and
narrow-gauge roads in the interior, connecting with them, are,
I am convinced, the true remedy for the evils of the State,
and for them San Francisco is not on the wrong side of the bay.
The public mind is pretty effectually awakened on this sub-
ject, and only needs instruction: since the commencement of
the Goat Island controversy we have learned a good deal.
As in all popular movements, we made mistakes at first, but
fortunately none that were irretrievable. We made the mis-
take last fall of supposing that the true way to fight the Cen-
tral Pacific Company was to construct an opposition overland
road, notwithstanding its enormous expense. I can afford to
say it was a mistake, because I was one of the earliest to ac-
cept and urge the idea myself. I am now convinced, how-
ever, that it was a mistake, and I find many others who have
studied the question have come to the same conclusion.
The overland freight is not what builds up these railroad
monopolists; it is the smallest part of their business, and
probably yields no profit. If we built a railroad through to
St. Louis or Memphis it would not begin to compete with
Mr. Stanford's roads for any doubtful trade, until com-
pleted through to its eastern terminus, and then only
for the overland freight. Now this latter does not exceed
one-tenth of the whole freight, so that the policy of a rival over-
land road is really a proposition to invest ten or fifteen millions of
dollars in an enterprise to compete with Mr. Stanford for one-tenth
of the trade, leaving him a monopoly of the other nine-tenths! The
people of San Francisco are too shrewd not to see that this

[22]

would be folly, especially while a fourth of the sum will ena-
ble them to compete with him successfully for the whole inte-
rior traffic of the State. They will, therefore, without doubt,
be found taking an interest in the various narrow-gauge rail-
road projects now making, as soon as the merits of the
question of gauge are fairly understood and the companies
organized.

This enterprise has the special merit of attacking the enemy
on his weak side, because it comes into competition with the
Southern Pacific Road. The Central Pacific might be de-
stroyed to-morrow, without inflicting any serious pecuniary
injury on those gentlemen. They have sold its bonds to the
extent of some eighty millions of dollars, and all that their
stock represents is the control of the road with its incidental
advantages. But the Southern Pacific is their own property;
they own the stock and own the bonds, and I judge, by com-
paring their various published statements, that they are now
preparing to put them on the market for sale. An enterprise
that promises to compete successfully with that road and
diminish its profits is a home-thrust at the very men who
are studying to injure us. Hence San Francisco should spe-
cially encourage this proposition, and in what 1 have here
said in its favor I address myself quite as much to its citizens
as I do to you.

THE

Political Questions

OF THE DAY:

Sri Sddre^ delivered at Broadway Sail,

OAKLAND,

Jfi

OV ^^a^ember 24th, 1873,

CHARLES A. WASHBURN,

o£;

~^il

3TJDBi PR I N T E R ,S

^^FRANC^^*

CALIFORNIA eTTATE L1P"A

ADDRESS.

Among the weaknesses of human nature to which all men are
subject, and which all wise men deplore, is that of procrastination.
The most trivial and common-place affairs are allowed to push
aside those serious matters that should be the rule of conduct and
guide of life. Of the duties thus deferred, is that of attending to
public affairs and of investigating those things which it is every-
body's business to act upon, but which are seldom duly considered
and examined till the time for action is close at hand. Then it is
when impartial investigation is impossible, when in the heat and ex-
citement of a political canvass the judgment is warped and blinded by
partisan prejudice, that most people give any serious attention to
the affairs of State; and as they are by this time no longer open to
argument or conviction, they follow their old-time leaders in their
efforts to glorify their party and justify themselves in adhering to
dead issues and party distinctions. The platoons and cohorts of
party very seldom change front after the battle has begun, and if
we look through the political history of our own times, we may notice
that the thoughts of men have crystallized into convictions when
neither canvassing nor stump-speaking were availed of to befog the
intellect or excite the passions. Revolutions, though sudden in
appearance are years in their growth. It took not only decades
and generations, but centuries of tyranny over submission, of big-
otry over credulity, of knowledge over ignorance, of luxury in the
midst of want, to so surcharge the French nation with that com-
plete sense of their wrongs, which, when it broke forth and first felt
its own power, became an engine of atrocities, to be guided at the
pleasure of a Couthon, a Robespierre, or a Marat. Men do not be-
come infuriate merciless demons, to combine in large numbers and
indulge in brutal crimes, until they have first been subjected to pro-
longed and cruel injustice. And when they do break forth in re-
volt, their excesses will be in a ratio corresponding with the oppres-
sions and wrongs that they have suffered.

So it was the great change that took place in the public mind
during the twenty years that preceded the great rebellion, rather
than that defiance and mullification had culminated in an attack
on the flag at Fort Sumter, that led necessarily to a war of sec-

— 4 —

tions. The same spirit of defiance had been shown thirty years before.
But the people had then scarcely begun to realize their accounta-
bility for a system which they acknowledged to be wrong, and
which they thought might most profitably be let alone. Yet a rev-
olution was all this time in progress. The changed sentiment of
the country found expression in the election of Abraham Lincoln ;
and when resistance was next offered, it was found that the day for
compromise had gone by ; the people of the free States were pre-
pared to meet force with force, and ready to atone with their own
blood for their indifference in the past.

The authors of this revolution were not the men who led our
armies to battle. The real heroes who braved the storms of oblo-
quy and abuse by venturing to tell people of their duties as well as
their interests, were the men who deserve the most noble apotheosis.
It is to John Quincy Adams, to Garrison, to Seward and Theodore
Parker ; to Greeley, and Hale, and Bailey and their co-laborers,
rather than to Grant, or Sherman, or Sheridan, or Thomas, or Ffr-
ragut that we owe it, that there is no longer an irrepressible con-
flict. These latter were never moved by those grand ideas of
statesmenship and eternal right as were the former. Though with
their own good swords they cut the way to victory, and peace ivitli-
out conflict, yet to a higher degree is the nation's gratitude due to
those noble men who pioneered the revolution on the ground of
principle and right.

But a panic is not a revolution. It is but a spasmodic outburst
that may be for a day, a month, or a year ; and when it subsides,
people are as indifferent as ever to the causes that produced it.
Under its excitement men become unreasoning, proscriptive, and
unjust, indulging in persecutions Avhich they recoil from in their
cooler moments. The " know-nothing" whirlwind that swept over
the country less than twenty years ago was a panic and not a revolu-
tion. It was but a ripple on the surface of the great current of events,
and when it subsided people became more apathetic than ever
respecting the causes that had provoked it. Ashamed for having
lent themselves to a cause so narrow and contracted in its aims
and purposes, they sought to show their apostacy to it by indifference
to the one principle on which it was founded.

Now whether we are in the midst of a revolution or merely in
a panic, is to be judged from the magnitude of the issues before the
public. If for a long time people have been ground under the iron
heel of monopolies and corporations, from which there is no escape
by means of the Constitution and laws of the country, then it is
time for a revolution that shall overturn the Constitution and give
us a better government. But if it is. but an awakening of the
people to- their own shortcomings in neglecting their own interests

— 5 —

and choosing incompetent and corrupt men to be their law
makers, and which only required a popular expression to
correct the evils, then it is a panic which, like the thunder
storm, will be of short duration but yet shall purify the
political atmosphere and arouse people to the duty of requiring a
higher standard of official morality. But Avhether it is a panic or
a revolution, there is none of that partisan blindness which during
the excitement of an election prevents a fair discussion of the
situation. Parties seem to be assuming those new relations incident
to the burial of old issues and the consequent necessity of new ones;
and therefore I take the occasion to offer some suggestions, in
the hope that they may be weighed and considered during the lull
of party politics that now obtains. I speak for no party, and if my
ideas be crude and my views impractical they commit no one but
myself.

In times past a few of us felt it to be our duty to advocate prin-
ciples and doctrines that were then so unpopular as to be dangerous
to those who upheld them. Since then they have become the law
of the land, and are now almost universally approved. 'Tis true
the later lights of the successful party, like Felton, and Booth,
and Gorham, and Swift, and Shannon, and Bowie, and Upson, and
Paul Morrill, if they condescended to notice us, always denounced
us as disturbers and fanatics; but no sooner did the fires of success
light up the fields of carnage and booty than we found them in the
front, denouncing us- neglectful of the " man and brother." So I
expect to live to see the day when the measures and policy I have
now to suggest, but for which I claim nothing new, will be as uni-
versally accepted and to see those who shall at first deride and
oppose them afterwards support them so zealously, when they see
them becoming popular,that they will denounce me for lukewarmness.
It matters little that a measure when first broached is ill received.
Innovation is ways offensive to habit and self-conceit. Men
take it as an ins alt if they are told that what they have been
accustomed to consider as the perfection of wisdom is not really
so, and that they have been blindly and stupidly carrying burdens
from which one good vigorous thought would relieve them. They
hate to acknowledge their folly by giving the vigorous thought
and so plod on in the old way.

The late Horace Greeley adopted as a principle in the conduct
of his newspaper, that he would tell people not what they wished
to hear, but what they ought to know. By adherence to this policy
he placed the Tribune on a higher plane than that of its cotem-
poraries, and made it, so long as the rule was observed, the most
potent journal in the country. Yet with this encouraging ex-
ample, how few do we find who can rise above the tricks of the

— 6 —

demagogue, and tell just what they believe. How seldom do we
find an editor in this respect like Greeley, and among public
speakers do we ever find one who does not try to flatter his
audience ? who is willing to hazard his popularity by boldly ad-
vancing truths that he knows will provoke hisses instead of applause,
and send him to Coventry sooner than to Congress ? Occasionally,
one who has no popularity to lose, and can, therefore, never be a
candidate for the popular suffrages, may venture to tell people
what they ought to know, being utterly indifferent, so far as he
himself is concerned, whether they like it or not. Such a man do
I profess myself, and to convince you that I am in earnest, I expect
to speak to you in a manner that will offend everybody who honors
me with his attention. At the same time, I expect to say some-
thing that will please everybody, for men are prone to delight in
seeing the follies and errors of others exposed, though they take it
in high dudgeon when their own shortcomings are held up to ridi-
cule and censure. Hence, as I do not expect that very many will
agree with me on every point, I hope to speak plainly enough, and
set forth my ideas clearly enough to offend all the rest.

And now, to come at once to the practical questions of the day,
what are the issues now before the people of California, or rather
those that during the recent political campaign received most of
their attention ? What measures were they discussing at their
firesides, in the public mart, on the streets, in the counting-house,
the tavern, and the corner grocery ? Not tariffs nor free trade,
not questions of labor and its reward, of European immigration,
of home manufactures, or of becoming one of the United States,
by adopting the national currency. Nothing was said during that
war of gladiators of reducing the hours of a legal day's labor ;
nothing was avowed publicly and above-board of guarding the
avenues of learning against the efforts of bigots and sectarians ;
nothing of educating the masses to self-reliance and independence,
that they might guard themselves against the devices of the devil,
now in the form of a ranting leveler and now in the garb of a
Jesuit priest. On all these matters scarce a word was said, but
the sole question over which the dominant party contended was
this : shall California be next represented in the United States
Senate by George C. Gorham or Newton Booth ? This question
was agitated and discussed by our newspapers and public speakers
almost- to the exclusion of every other, as if they wished to belittle
us as a State and dwarf us as a people, by a tacit admission that
there was no one else in the State competent to the position of
Senator, and that, too, when we had, standing out resplendent with
their acquired laurels, such intellectual giants as Cole and Fay —
such prodigies of purity and honesty as Casserly and Pixley.

The stalking, horse behind which the contestants discharged
their blunderbusses, was the Central Pacific Railroad ; and though
no one pretended to tell how the people were to be relieved from
the insolence and overcharging of the great monopoly by the elec-
tion of this man or the defeat of that, they had the satisfaction of
making ugly faces at the Company, and of seeing it obliged to sus-
pend the extension of its roads into the more, remote parts of the
State. They had the higher satisfaction of seeing the construction
of other roads to -the Pacific, also suspended, and their completion
postponed for a long time ; so that for years to come, the Central
Pacific will have a complete monopoly of the overland business.
The catastrophe which the destructives have precipitated, will put
millions of dollars into the pockets of Stanford and his fellow de-
spoilers ; and for indefinite years must the people of the Pacific
Coast submit to the tyranny and exactions of a grasping, defiant
monopoly.

But all through this campaign, the vital practical living issues
that directly and immediately touch the interests of the people,
were utterly ignored. The result was an expression of popular
hostility to that chief of abominations, the railroad monopoly,
which holds the material interests of the State in its iron folds ;
-that huge constrictor that has so effectually crushed out competi-
tion, that trade, and commerce, and agriculture are at the mercy
of a merciless despotism. But this expression of the public voice
was, I fear, only a voice ; vox et prceterea nihil. Among all the
speeches and editorials of the campaign denouncing the railroad
monopoly, no remedy was proposed ; no means suggested to re-
press its arrogance, or counteract its power for evil. No one who
exposed or railed at its abuses rose to the dignity of statesman-
ship so far as to suggest any plan of relief. We did not lack for
scolds to denounce and threaten. Destructives and levelers were
to be heard at every gathering. But the voice of a statesman — of
a constructive political leader and economist, who could propose
anything to supplant this grinding monopoly, and give us something
better — something that should aid the farmer and mechanic — some-
thing that should bring us capital, and create factories, thus find-
ing employment for all who are willing to labor — that voice was
never heard. Of cheap demagogues who could pull down — who
could decry existing evils — the world has never known a lack — but
of those who could suggest measures of improvement, and, as re-
medies to admitted abuses have advocated innovations and changes
of a constructive and creative character, there has always been a
marvelous scarcity. And when we have had one with the energy
and courage to undertake great enterprises, and successfully put
them into execution, we 'have had whole communities to say that

— 8 —

such things ought to be done. We have numberless writers and
editors to tell us of the benefits to be received by the public, if
other people will only undertake and carry through such schemes
as the introduction of pure water, the construction of gas wjarks,
manufactories, and railroads. Appeals to men of wealth and en-
terprise are incessant for them to come forward and carry out
these projects, and earn the gratitude of the people, who, in turn,
will build them monuments of marble or of bronze. But the monu-
ments to those who do undertake these public works, if they suc-
ceed, and do not beggar themselves, are not generally of marble,
but they are more often effigies of themselves, to be burnt in the
public streets, as if they were public enemies.

A dozen years ago, the great necessity of California was felt to
be a Pacific railroad. Our speakers and politicians waxed elo-
quent on this subject, and our newspapers were teeming with
articles, showing that it was the duty of Congress to aid and of
capitalists to undertake that great work.

At last a few men of limited means, but of patriotic impulses,
who, long before the war, had been pronounced in their opposition
to the extension of slavery, had the sagacity to see that a Pacific
railroad was a national necessity, that as a union measure it ought
to receive the support of the national government, and casting their
bread upon the waters, they embarked all they had in the perilous
venture : their name as responsible, fair-dealing men ; their for-
tunes, which, though not large, had been acquired by years of toil
and economy; their assured competency, for the risk of failure,
bankruptcy, and an old age of penury. But they ventured all ;
and when abroad I learned of the success of the enterprise, I con-
fess I rejoiced to know that it was in the hands of union men, men
with whom I had been in sympathy, during those angry days pre-
ceding the rebellion ; men who had been known as earnest, self-
sacrificing Republicans ; good citizens, commanding the respect of
all as men of integrity and public spirit. And the people of Cali-
fornia recognized the service that those men had rendered to the
State and nation, and rejoiced at their success ; and had they been
satisfied, not with moderate, but with enormous fortunes, they would
have been regarded to this day as great public benefactors, entitled
to all the civic honors that a generous people, could bestow.

But who and what are thosis men now ? Their career illustrates
as well as any example since Elisha foretold to Hazael, the change
that should come over him on his accession to power, the wisdom of
the prayer of Agur, " Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me
with food convenient for me ; lest I be full and deny thee, and
say who is the Lord ? or lest I be poor, and' steal, and take the
name of my God in vain."

— 9 —

These men who as merchants or. business* men stood above re-
proach, whose word was as good as their bond, who v. ould be
ashamed to take an unfair advantage in business, what would they
not do now, as monopolists and millionaires to carry a point ! There
is hardly a meanness to which they will not stoop, or an advantage
they will not take. As men of business, whose standing depended
on their general character, they would scorn to meddle in the low
tricks of politics. But as railroad kings they thrust their polluting
hands into every ward caucus. They dictate to their followers their
boarding-houses and washwomen. They discriminate in their
charges to the minutest details, giving special rates to their friends,
or rather subjects, general rates to the public, and excessive rates
to their enemies or competitors. They wish it to be understood that
it is for every man's interest to bow down and worship them, and
to make that plain, they plant the iron heel on these who refuse to
do so. Leland Stanford, the oil merchant, would never have set up
a rival candle shop alongside of a small dealer on another square
to break him down, nor would Huntington, much less Hopkins, have
kept an hour in his employ an expressman who had purposely run
down and smashed up the wagon of a rival hardware dealer.
There is not a hoodlum that cries newspapers on the streets, nor a
blear-eyed cripple who sells songs and cheap literature at the cross-
ings, who would not be ashamed to sell you yesterday's paper for
that just issued, or to take your money on the last day of Decem-
ber for an almanac of the expiring year, when you had paid it for
the one which was incoming. ' But the railroad kings, now they are so
rich and powerful, that they feel they are above the law and can
with impunity defy and insult whom they please,do not think it
out of the way to run an opposition steamer in order to break down
any little boat that should try to accommodate people they had be-
fore neglected ; or to endanger the lives of scores of people by run-
ning down the vessel that had the temerity to carry them in oppo-
sition to the great monoply. They have no shame in taking your
money or my money for a commutation ticket from Oakland to
San Francisco within three days of the end of the month, and put-
ting on you a ticket good only for two or three trips, when you
think, and they know you think, you are commuting for a month.
They can sell you yesterday's daily, or last year's almanac, and
when you complain to their underlings the satisfaction you get will
be a brief notice that you can go to the devil.

Does any one excuse such acts ? Not one ; and we shall be told
that the chief men of a vast corporation cannot know of the inso-
lence and impertinence of their underlings and upstarts. But if
there is any truth in maxims or proverbs, this is true : " Like mas-
ter, like man." The employes of the railroad company know full

— 10 —

well what general deportment will most please their employers.
For years I had the Tortune, good or bad, to reside in a country
where the government was an absolute despotism. The head of
that government was a monster without parallel in the history of
the world. A tyrant and an arrant coward, who saw an enemy in
every bush, and quivered and shook at every sound, his only de-
light was in the misery of those around him. His diversion was
the infliction of torture, and he spared neither age nor sex. Nei-
ther fidelity nor kinship came between him and his victims. His
best officers were arrested, flogged, and shot, without knowing their
offense. His brothers and sisters were tortured days, weeks, and
months, being kept alive solely that their unnatural brother might
enjoy the sight of their agony. His own mother was treated with
the same unnatural brutality, and when rescued from the grasp of
her tiger cub, her back was but one mass of putrid sores, in which
the maggots held carnival. This man, or rather monster, did not
apply the lash with his OA\rn hand to the backs of his brothers, sis-
ters or mother, nor did he tie the thongs that Were to tear his vic-
tim's limbs from their sockets. But his underlings knew well his
fierce and cruel character, and that any leniency shown to prison-
ers would subject them to equal tortures, while any excesses would
be forgiven, or rather would procure promotion and favor. Hence
they showed alacrity in torture, and seemed to enjoy its infliction.
The same spirit of flunkeyism may be seen everywhere. The arro-
gant, ill-natured, tyrannical master is sure to be waited on by one
who takes pride in imitating his rudeness and brutality. If the
subordinates of the railroad are rude and uncivil to the public, they
are co in imitation of their chiefs. They have learned that com-
plaints for incivility are either not heeded or are passed to their
credit as showing zeal for their masters' interests.

That such men, whose wealth is told by millions, should stoop to
such contemptible tricks merely for the slight pecuniary gain to
themselves, is incredible. It is the lust of power that governs
them in descending to such meanness ; they want to make people
feel how broad is the scope of their influence, and that there is no
one so humble but he may be reached by the wand of their mo-
nopoly and be made to wither and wilt as did the tree which Christ
cursed. They wish all to understand that they are responsible to
neither God nor man ; that they are to say Avho shall be Senators
and Representatives in Congress, State legislators and judges. •

That it is the lust of power which now governs them, is evident
from the fact that their wealth of many millions to each is far more
than they can care for, either for comfort and luxury to themselves,
or for a heritage to their children. The almost universal exper-
ience of Republican institutions in America is, that colossal fortunes

— 11 —

are dissipated within one or two generations ; and it is not to be
supposed that either of these railroad magnates will be so inconsist-
ant as to be a rival of Peabody or Girard, and to leave the mil-
lions, wrung to a large extent, at the price of the curses and cries
of the multitude, to compound with the future for the oppressions
of the present, by founding some scientific, charitable, or educa-
tional institution. No ; philanthropy does not rob Peter to pay
Paul, nor wrong the neighbor to be generous to the stranger. It
does not refuse justice to bestow bounty.

I do not say that in the use they make of their power they are
not like other men. Who can say that he, if suddenly lifted to
great wealth and power, would not abuse them to tyrannize over his
fellow-men ? If such known philanthropists as Pickering or Fit'ch,
and Fay and Cohen, and Reese and Haggin — men who are l^nown
to wander about nights to find avenues for their charities — were
told that within a month a controlling interest in the C. P. R. R.
would be theirs, and that they would be as extortionate, as avaricious,
unjust and insolent as Stanford, and Huntington, and Hopkins,,
would not each exclaim : " But what ; is thy servant a dog, that he
should do this thing !" And yet who does not know that if such a
change were made, it would not be two months before the whole
people would cry out for the return of King Log, in the place of
King Serpent.

The truth is, as shown by all history, irresponsible power is to be*
entrusted to no man and to no set of men. In the hands of the
best of men, even, it is always abused ; and if experience teaches
anything, it is that all authority should be subject to and under the
direct control of the strong arm of the people. The divine right
of kings is an exploded doctrine, and is not to be succeeded by the
divine right of monopolies. The privileges of feudalism and the
old noblesse, are not to be relegated to the princes of shoddy or the
manipulators of swindling raids on the Government.

It is often said by superficial thinkers, that every people have as.
good a government as they deserve : that as the power lies with them,
it is their fault if they submit to oppression. Though this is not uni-
versally true, it is true of the citizens of & republic. If they have
a bad government and permit peculation, and fraud, and official in-
competency, when they and they alone have the power to correct
all abuses, then they deserve to suffer, and we should rejoice in
their agony of oj)pression, for that and that alone will arouse them
to their duties as members of the body politic. Society, or rather the
great public, in every country where despotism is not absolute, is
like a galvanic battery. This instrument may be charged with
electricity to a small extent, and the subtle fluid may be allowed to
accumulate unnoticed until it can hold no more. It has no outlet

— 12 —

or conductor, and when the point of its utmost capacity is reached,
it leaps forth like a thunder clap, shivering all before it. So one
abuse may be perpetrated against the people, and then another and
another. All see and realize it and seem to acquiesce in it, yet all
the time the body politic is getting overcharged with resentment, or,
if I may so call it, the electricity of indignation. The perpetrators,
grown bold at the public indifference, give another turn to the crank,
and then they add another, till, just as they come to believe that
the people are mere passive machines, the accumulated wrath leaps
out with a lightning flash, the structures of fraud and oppression
are scattered in fragments, to be succeeded by a clear sky, a
healthier atmosphere.

In this country the cumulative wrongs take the form of gigan-
tic monopolies, and are of a most dangerous and fatal character.
Those of a more general character are the railroad, the telegraph
and the combinations of capitalists to keep money out of the coun-
try in order that interest may be kept at a high rate.

Of all the inventions and enterprises that in these later days en-
ter into the the comforts and necessities of the entire community,
the telegraph and the railroad alone, possess the conditions essential
to a strict monopoly. For their better working and greater useful-
ness they should be all under one management, and no competition
should be possible. While this may not be practicable at present,
or to a limited extent only, so far as a railroads are concerned, yet
there is no reason why the telegraph should not be so managed.

Telegraph lines, to be self-supporting, must be many thousand
miles in length, and should be able to gather the news and bear the
messages from thousands of distant points. The lines of one
company can do all the business on any and all routes at cheaper
rates than it can be done by two or more. The expenses of build-
and operating more than one, will necessarily be greater than
those of a single line that should do all the business. For this in-
creased expense, of course, the public must pay ; and hence it is as
clear as the demonstration of a problem in Euclid, that in the tel-
egraphing of the country there should be no competition. It should
be done in the cheapest manner possible, and at rates so low as to
make it a self-sustaining institution of the government ; no more,
no less. It should be like the Post Office, a department run for
the public good, for which each man who used it should pay just the
cost of sending; and delivering his message.

But railroads over the same routes can bear competition still less
than telegraphs. In fact in most cases competition is practically
impossible. On the through lines between important points compe-
tition may and does exist, but that is because the roads pass through
different sections of country and accomodate a different way-travel

— 13 —

on which there is no competition. But over the same routes parallel
lines would be simply ruinous, and hence they do not exist. . In no oth-
er branch of business does the same opportunity for monopoly exist
as in these two. It is true, that a city can tolerate a gas monopoly
or a water monopoly if it chooses, but there is nothing in nature to
prevent other companies from making and selling gas in opposition,
though the expenses would thereby be increased and the aggregate
cost of gas to the community would be more. Hence it would be
better, except for the scarcity of honest men in municipal coun-
cils, for the cities to own their own gas and water works.

There is a great deal of talk about other monopolies, especially
about the monopoly given to manufacturers, by reason of a pro-
tective tariff. But for this complaint there is absolutely no founda-
tion in reason. What though the manufacturers of cutlery, or cut
glass, of wooden ware, or of iron houses, make their ten, twenty, or
thirty per cent, per annum on their capital, while the man who
owns houes and lets them, or owns money and loans it, gets but
half that interest. Why does not this latter sell his houses, or call
in his loans, and go into- one of these favored manufacturing
enterprises that pay such enormous profits ? Why does he not
get the advantage of this protective tariff by going into manu-
facturing business, thereby doubling his profits at the same time
that he gives employment to the men around him ? A year or
two since, and that poor oppressed friend of the people, Cornelius
Vanderbilt, complained that, owing to the duty on iron and coal,
the miners and manufacturers of Pennsylvania were getting a larger
interest on their capital than he was, and he wanted the tariff
amended so that he could import iron and coal free of duty. But
the great advocate of protection, and chosen leader of the Demo-
cratic party, Horace Greeley, promptly met him with the charge
that he was a fraud and an impostor, VThy, said he, if manu-
facturing is so profitable as you pretend, why do you not take a
few of those ill-gotten millions, Avith which you are now trying to
embarrass the government and all legitimate enterprises by your illicit
speculations in Wall street, and open some iron and coal mines of
your own ? Why do you not build some furnaces, foundries, and
machine-shops, and so share in these enormous profits of the
manufacturers ? The field is open, and wherever the profits are
unusually large, let capital and enterprise enter and take posses-
sion. But Vanderbilt did not venture his money in any such un-
dertaking, for though he had not too much principle to act the
demagogue, he had too much sense not to know that in a country
of free and intelligent people, where everybody is striving to get
into the best paying business, no field yielding extra profits is ever
left long unoccupied. My friend, Michael Reese, complains that he

— 14 —

gets only eighteen per cent, a year on his loaned millions, while
my other friend, Donald McLellan, gets twenty -five per cent, in
his business of manufacturing blankets ; whereas, if the duties on
woollen goods were taken off, poor Michael might get the blankets
that he sleeps under for one or two dollars a pair less, and Donald,
after borrowing all the money he could from Michael, in order to
keep on in business and keep his men employed, rather than turn
them into the streets to starve, or to still further glut the labor
market, he could close up his business, and deed his factor}'- to the
free trade philanthropist, to be used as a rookery. But, as the
duties are not likely to be taken off, why does not Michael engage
in one of those manufacturing monopolies ? Does he think the in-
vestment would pay him so large an interest, that his conscience
would not permit him to take it ? Perhaps that is the reason ; but
a more likely one is, that he knows manufacturing in California,
even with all the protection afforded by the present tariff, does not,
as a general thing, pay so high an interest as may be realized in
other ways. Hence, I am justified in saying that monopolies in
this country are limited to matters in which, for reasons of a
physical character, there can be no competition ; and of these, the
two of most importance are the railroad and the telegraph.

And of these two,- the telegraph, as now managed, is the greater
abomination, and in all its aspects and features answers more nearly
the description of an odious monopoly — the most odious and danger-
ous ever known in the United States. Its network is spread all
over the country. Its power as a political engine exceeds that of
the Federal Government, with its standing army of office-holders.
It is entirely antagonistic to the genius and spirit of Republican
institutions ; a monopoly in the hands of the most unscrupulous
stock-gamblers in the country. A majority of the stock is owned
by none other than Commodore Vanderbilt, the richest as well as
the meanest man in the United States. None but a very rich man,
one having millions, is capable of the meanest acts. Vanderbilt
with his hundred millions dares and does do things that would
cause another man, having only his hundreds of thousands, to be
scorned and shunned, and driven from all business and social
circles. And this is the man who controls the Western Union
Telegraph, and not only that, but he has a preponderating influence
on railroad lines that represent on the stock board $215,000,000.

With his foot on the neck of commerce, his hand is on the
throat of general intelligence, which is doled out to the people of
the United States as suits his pleasure or interest. The policy of
this Company, of which he is the controlling spirit, is not only to
make enormous dividends to its managers, but to furnish people
with the knowledge on which they shall found their opinions.

— 15 —

In the dark ages of priestcraft and superstition, when the cowl
was paramount to the crown, and learning was the monopoly of the
cloister, it was the policy of the priests to hold the keys of knowl-
edge in their own hands ; and, so long as they could do this, they
governed the world. They knew that knowledge was power, and
the most dangerous order to human freedom and enlightenment
which the world has ever known has constantly labored to prevent
people from receiving any knowledge except such as was filtered
through the sieves of Jesuitical bigotry, and was stamped and ap-
proved by the maw-worms of superstition. The disciples of Loyola
are more busy and hopeful to-day than at any time since the princi-
pal sovereigns of Catholic Europe were compelled in self-protection
to banish them, as insufferable pests, from their dominions. Their
object still is to hold the keys of knowledge. The free non-secta-
rian school is their abomination, and they are subordinating all
other questions to this one of the control of the school money. They
would have the youth reared in the belief that their teachings are
true and infallible, well knowing that when the majority of the peo-
ple shall accept them as their sole guides in morals and religion, the
church will be as absolute in authority as in the good old days when
Galileo was imprisoned and Jews and heretics were roasted by
scores at every auto-da-fe for the amusement and spiritual edifica-
tion of the saints. These were the Jesuits of Loyola. Hard, big-
oted, and logical, they sought power by holding the gates of learn-
ing. But we have now another order of Jesuits, harder and more
selfish than the others, but neither as honest nor as logical. They
are the political, financial Jesuits, who seek to control the avenues
of knowledge to the people, whom they tax enormously for the in-
formation which they allow them to receive, at the same time they
try to wield the power that elects Presidents and Senators, and
blasts reputations, and makes heroes of nonentities in a manner
never thought of by Pope or Emperor.

The Western Union Telegraph now has its lines extended to all
parts of the United States, and all the information it gives to the
people must pass through the hands of agents, who are responsible
only to the' Company. Its charges are so excessive as to pay
large dividends on stock so watered that its nominal value is five
times the actual cost. On an investment of eight millions, and
that mostly the earnings of the lines, the Company extort from the
public dividends on forty millions, reserving all the while a fund
sufficient to break down opposition throughout the less populous
parts of the country. Between such large cities as Boston, New
York, Philadelphia, and Washington, where the business is so vast
they cannot afford a destructive opposition, the rates are reasonably
low. But wherever there is no competition, the charges are so

— 16 —

excessive that the telegraph is scarcely available for any but the
rich.

It is but about two years ago that a ten-word telegram from
San Francisco to New York was $o. It would probably have
been at that figure still, but for the antagonism of the other great
monopoly, the Central Pacific Pi. R. Company. No ordinary company
could have established and maintained opposition lines, but the
Union Pacific and the Central Pacific needed one for their own
accommodation : it was useless for the Western Union to attempt
to break them down by running opposition at losing rates. So they
compromised by cutting down prices to half what it was, and five
times what it ought to be. For this favor, this fraction of a just
reform, the people of California and the whole Pacific Coast are
indebted, not to the independent press that claims to be the special
foe of all monopolies, but to the Central Pacific R. R. Company.

As an adjunct of the Western Union Company, is another mon-
opoly, so closely connected with it as to be almost, if not altogether,
a part of it. This is the Associated Press Company. This Com-
pany has its agents in all the principal cities, and, at less important
points, the telegraph operators act in that capacity. Thus united
this double monopoly has a great advantage in the collection and
distribution of news over anybody and everybody else ; and as the
Associated Press has special rates for its transmission, all news-
papers not belonging to it are at such a disadvantage, they can
only keep the field by superior ability and enterprise. This Asso-
ciation is a close corporation, to which only three papers in Cali-
fornia are admitted. And these three papers claim to be the
champions of the people against all monopolies ; at the same time,
they maintain that one which is the most dangerous and most de-
testable of all.

In these days of rapid transit and great activity, the majority of
people read little beside the first telegraphic news, and therefore
they are almost compelled to take those papers having the fullest
dispatches. Under existing monopolies it is scarcely possible that
any papers can be so well served in that respect as those belonging
to the combination. Hence people are forced to take them, no
matter how much they detest their principles, or dislike their pro-
prietors. Having the power of coloring all facts of public interest,
and knowing that opinions take form according to first impressions,
a monopoly like this may shape the national parties to a great ex-
tent, and make great men of charlatans, and rogues the popular
favorites.

And why has this monstrous monopoly been tolerated so long,
and why has not the press generally denounced and exposed it ?
The telegraph company have provided against that. In its con-

— 17 —

tracts with newspapers it provides that they shall receive dispatches
only on condition that nothing unfriendly or adverse to the monop-
oly shall be admitted into their columns. The newspapers must be
muzzled, before they can have the permission of Vanderbilt, Orton
and Simonton to publish news. An independent press ! Thralls
and hirelings of a Jesuitical despotism, rather let it be called.

And now the question arises, how is this monopoly to be broken
up ? The Western Union people will tell us that we have only to
establish other lines alongside of theirs, and the thing is done. But
how are you and I that haven't any forty millions, or even eight
millions, to start an opposition, to help ourselves ? We are power-
less, and they know it, and so they insult us by telling us to help
ourselves, if we can. In other countries, the government has
stepped in and bought up the private lines, and taken the whole
telegraph business into its own hands. The result is, much better
service at cheaper rates, at the same time that the business is self-
supporting.

The objection, and the only valid one in this country, to having
the telegraph under the management of the Government is, the
clanger of centralization. It is feared that with the control of this
vast engine of power, the Government might use it for improper
purposes ; that it would largely increase the number of Federal
office-holders, and that an ambitious President might use it to per-
petuate his power ; that a third term, or a life term, would be easy,
if the avenues of knowledge were guarded by those already in
authority. There is force in this argument. There might be
danger to Republican institutions, if the telegraph were under the
control of the Post Office Department ; but of course there can be
none when it is managed by and for such immaculate patriots as
Vanderbilt, Orton and Simonton, Pickering, Fitch and Anthony.

Now I admit the danger of centralization, and that a great power
like that of the telegraph, ought not to be in the hands of the
Federal administration. But a monopoly that is responsible to Con-
gress is not so dangerous as one that is responsible to Vanderbilt.
But is there no remedy against the abuse of such power possible ?
May not the Government own the telegraph, and yet not have the
control of it ? Cannot it be placed, though the property of the
nation, in the hands of men who are not only above suspicion, but
who shall be independent of the President, and not beholden to
him either for their appointment or continuance in office ? It can
be done ; and it is the simplest thing in the world to put not only
the telegraph, but the great railroad interests of the country under
a direction that shall be efficient and harmonious, and yet be inde-
pendent of the Federal Government — so independent, that Imper-
ial Caesar could not turn off a brakeman, or find a place . for a
favorite.

— 18 —

For the Government to purchase all the railroads, or even a
quarter of them, and try to mangage them, is preposterous. A
measure of this kind would not be approved by the people, and
hence it is idle to discuss its merits or feasibility. It would so in-
crease the national debt, as to seriously prejudice the country's
credit, and would give occasion for a standing army of office-hold-
ers so numerous as to be dangerous. . Civil Sevice Reform, or some
other scheme, must be devised, by which the management of the
road should not be subject to Federal interference ; and even then
the Government must begin by purchasing or building only one or
two great highways from the granaries of the West to the sea-
shore, and with a view specially, if not entirely, to reducing the
cost of transportation.

For many years the people of the Mississippi Valley have been
groaning under the extortions of the railroads. So large a part of
all they could raise has been taken to get the rest to market, they
have found that even with industry and economy and abundant
crops, they would make but little more than a meager subsistence ;
while the managers and directors of the roads have as a rule be-
come so rich as to reckon their ill-gotten gains by millions. These
enormous fortunes have all been realized by overcharging the farm-
ers, the merchants and the general public. Each million of Van-
derbilt, of Drew, of Jay Gould and of the departed Jim Fisk, rep-
resented the toil and sweat, the hard fare and the extra hours of
labor of the workingman, so that they have all clothed themselves
Avith curses as with a garment. In casting about for relief
from this monopoly of transportation, the plundered farmers have
proposed such national and State legislation as would compel the
roads to charge only a certain price, both for freight and fare. But
measures of this kind can bring little relief, for what power
short of an absolute despotism can compel a man or a company to
carry freight at all, or at a faster or cheaper rate than is suited to its
own interest or convenience. The government, it is true, may require
uniformity and general rates for everybody, and that freight or fare
shall not exceed a given amount per mile ; but what if under this
law a company finds it must lose money on every train ? who then is
to compel it to light its fires or run its engines ?

The good people of the State of Illinois thought to help them-
selves by passing a law that no higher rates should be charged on
local freight for short .distances than was charged for through
freight across the State. Now as the local business is nearly al-
ways the principal source of revenue, it was inevitable that in ad-
justing the new rates to meet the requirements of the law, the
prices on through freights and fares must be augumented, while the
local rates would be diminished. But on the through routes there

— 19 —

is great competition, and if the roads were compelled to raise the
price of transportation across the State, then must the through
freights seek other routes and avoid Illinois in their transit east and
west. But if, on the other hand, the local rates were reduced to
correspond with those for long distances, than the roads would lose
money on half the trains they run. In that case they would run a
less number of them, and many places before accommodated Avould
cease to hear the whistle of the locomotive. In this country there
is no power to compel a railroad company to run its trains any more
than there is to compel a private citizen to go to church or abstain
from meat on Friday. Uniform rules prescribed by the govern-
ment can never secure equal justice under such a multiplicity of
circumstances and such a variety of conditions as is presented by
the railroad interests of this country. There must be a plan de-
vised that will admit of a certain amount of flexibility, so that every
man shall be required to pay cost and no more for what he
receives.

Therefore I say there is no remedy but for the Federal Govern-
ernment to come to the rescue. The cities of the East realize that
that they are the losers, as well as the Western farmers, in having
the crops of the West rot on the ground, or the corn burned for
fuel. To manufacture cheaply they must have cheap bread and
cheap meat, but these things they can get only with cheaper
freights. With cheaper food they can extend and increase their
business, and the primary question is, how to get it. The capital-
ists of New England, always noted for sagacity, see that there are
no other ways for bringing the grain crop of the West to the sea
except by the way of the Yanderbilt, Drew & Gould railroads.
They find that the St. Lawrence river may be made available as a
great highway, and that other routes for transportation may be
availed of to bring clown the price of freights, and the interests of
the great manufacturing towns of the East are so vast that they will
have cheaper connection with the West in spite of the railroad
kings of New York, and with or without the aid of the Grangers.
The interests of rival cities on the sea coast must in the end compel
reduced rates. In anticipation of such opposition, the moneyed men
of New York, not of the railroad circle, who wish to concentrate the
whole business of the country at New York, have projected an air-
line double-track freight road from Chicago to New York. This,
they think, would give the latter city an advantage over any other
sea-board town ; but when completed it would be run entirely in the
interests of its owners, and would be just as selfish or eager for big
profits as Vanderbilt, or Drew, or Jay Gould. They would keep
up their schudule to the highest notch possible without driving
away freight to other cities and by other roads. Men never build

— 20 —

railroads for philanthropy, but for profits ; and the world is old
enough for people to have learned that they can never confer pe-
culiar power or grant special privileges on individuals or corpora-
tions that will not use them and abuse them for their own special
benefit.

That this road may be run in the interests of the people and
with no regard to profits of directors or stockholders, it should, it
must be owned by the United States. It should be a freight and
emigrant road, made and ballasted in the best manner possible ;
the trains to run at a low rate of speed, and the schudule of freight
and passage should be so low as but to pay the cost of keeping the
road in repair, and an interest of say six per cent, on its cost to the
Government. Thus managed the Government could never be a
loser, and the people who used the road and had the benefit of it,
would be those who paid the interest on its cost.

So built and so managed, the road would carry freight for one-
fourth or one-half of the present rates, and having established the
fact that one road could carry freights and passengers at such re-
duced prices, people would understand that other roads could do
the same, at least approximately ; and if they did not, it would be
because of mismanagement, Credit Mobilier rings, or from a de-
sire to pay large dividends on stock highly diluted with water.

But this road would not stop at Chicago. It would be extended
across the broad plains of Illinois, and Iowa to the Missouri
River, and thence inevitably to San Francisco. That the Union
Pacific and Central Pacific must fall into the hands of the govern-
ment sooner or later, unless the first bond-holders are literally
robbed of everything, I suppose no one doubts. That the com-
panies ever expect to pay for them, and own them with a clear
title, and no unpaid bond or claim hanging over them, I suppose no
intelligent person believes. That part of the great scheme may,
therefore, be said to be already half accomplished, and with a peo-
ple united and determined no longer to submit to the extortions of
the existing monopolies, but to have a government telegraph, and
one great central thoroughfare, which shall serve as a regulator
and guide to other roads, it will be but a short time before the
extortions now practiced, both by telegraphs and railroads, will
find a lasting remedy.

The questions that now first occurr in connection with this plan
are, how can such an increase of power be conferred on the Federal
Government without risk of abuse ? Will not the people, from a
wholesome dread of centralization, rather suffer present evils than
venture on an experiment so dangerous to Republican institutions ?

But these dangers may all be avoided, and then the objections
will be answered. I will tell you how, and I claim nothing new

— 21 —

nor original in what I have to propose. My plan is something
similar to," and yet very different from, what the greatest thinker of
recent times, John Stewart Mill, proposed in his essay on Repre-
sentative Government for forming an Upper Chamber of Parlia-
ment to supplant the effete and useless House of Lords.

Let us suppose, then, that the United States shall be parceled
out into seven divisions ; more might be better, but for the present
I will say seven. Let the New England States constitute one of
these ; the Pacific States another ; the great Middle States the
third ; the Western States the fourth ; the Northwestern States
the fifth ; the Southern and Southeastern the sixth and seventh.
Now, having in the organic act for building or purchasing the road
established certain rules, let a board of directors be constituted,
who, under the provisions of the same act, shall have the entire di-
rection of the road and all its affairs, and these directors to be as
independent of the President and his Cabinet, and also of Congress,
as are the governors of the several States. In their appointments,
the President should have neither hand nor voice, for they should
come into office under the organic law. At the creation of the
board, the director for each division of the States should be the
ex-governor, who had served as governor for the longest period,
and as vacancies occurred, they should be filled, not by the ap-
pointment of the President, not by popular election, but the man
who for the most continuous years has been chosen and re-chosen
years before as the chief magistrate of his State, should, in virtue
of these endorsements, succeed to this high and responsible post ;
the highest, and with the exception of the President, the most im-
portant in the land.

It is not to be supposed that a board of directors thus constituted
would contain many practical railroad men. But they would be
sure to be men of practical sense, of approved integrity and general
ability. If not experienced in the business they would not be wed-
ded to any favorite theories or prejudiced by former competition or
rivalries. And if not practical railroad men, they would at least
have the judgment to employ those that were, and to supplement
their own deficiencies with the best talent in the country. In
attempting any complex or untried business, it is well known that
next to knowing all about it is the consciousness of not understand-
ing it, and a realizing sense of the necessity of getting the assist-
ance of those who do.

The promoters of the Central Pacific R. R. were none of them
engineers nor practical railroad men when they entered on their
great undertaking. A dry goods man, a lawyer, two hardware
dealers, and an oil merchant made up the Company, and not one
of them knew more of building railroads than he did of building

22 —

ships ; and yet their worst enemies will give them credit for having
managed their affairs with great ability and probably more success-
fully than if one or more of them had been railroad builders by
trade. But as they all enjoyed equal ignorance, they could agree
on employing the best talent to be found, thus supplementing their
own hard sense with the science, experience and skill of others.
So, I believe it would be no objection but rather an advantage, to
have a board of directors of a work or interest so vast, composed
of men noted rather for their practical sense than for any specialty
as engineers, contractors, or financiers. By having the control
and direction placed in such hands, the much dreaded centralization
would be entirely avoided and both honesty and efficiency be secured.
With one great main line at first, and afterwards two, if the success
of the first should warrant it, then three or more, traversing the
continent, under such management the other lines would find they
had real competition. The owners and directors of other roads
would be obliged to conform to nearly the same tariff of charges,
or else they would find narrow-guage roads built in great numbers
as feeders to the great air-line tracks, thus leaving the old lines
with little to support them.

Of course a measure of this kind can only be carried through on
the imperative demand of the people. The great railroad monopo-
lists would oppose it at every stage, and every purchasable Con-
gressman and every purchasable newspaper would denounce it as
fraught with ruin to the country and the destruction of vested
rights. But these monopolists have for years taken the cream of
the nation's prosperity, have watered its stock to five times its cost,
and received a high rate of interest on its inflated valuation, and
it is neither hardship nor injustice for them or the telegraph com-
pany to receive the average returns of capital invested in other
industries.

Such is my plan in th • rough for placing the railroads in such
hands that, being built or bought by the Government for the whole
people, they may be supported by the whole people, and run for the
benefit of the whole people, at the same time that the power and
influence of the Federal administration shall be in no whit increased.
Perhaps others besides the railroad monopolists and kings would
object to such a policy. The destructives, levellers and communists
would object to any solution of the problem that would remove all
cause of complaint, and would join hands with the monopolists to
defeat a measure that should bring prosperity to the land, if at the
same time it took away all just ground of complaint against the
Government. Destruction is the god of their idolatry, and at this
time, when the people are justly clamorous for a constructive states-
manlike policy that shall relieve them from their grievous burdens,-

— 23 —

these night-birds of ill omen are heard croaking and threatening, as
if in destruction alone people might find redress of all their griev-
ances. Men of this class may be popular for a time. Thus was
Absalom, thus Kobespierre, thus John Wilkes, thus Aaron Burr.
But, fortunately, unreason always rests on a fragile throne, and
demagogues who appeal to popular passions, and who incite to de-
stroy, are sure to receive the final reward of an infamous or detested
memory. The man who builds an aquaduct that for centuries may
give water to the thirsty, or a viaduct to shorten or ease the jour-
ney of the footsore traveler, deserves the gratitude of future gen-
erations. But to him, whose genius is only for destruction, the
best boon is neglect and obscurity, to be followed by impenetrable
oblivion.

There is another evil in California, more disastrous in its effects
than either the railroad or telegraph monopolies. In one sense this,
too, is a monopoly, as it inures entirely to the benefit of a few, and
at the expense of the many. I allude to the combined efforts of
the money lenders to keep out capital from abroad, whereby the
rate of interest is kept up to usurious rates. This monopoly, though
in one sense not a monopoly, as it is open to all who have money to
lend, is the creature of a dozen men in San Francisco. Their ob-
ject is to prevent any reduction of the rate of interest ; and as this
can be done most effectually by keeping out money from abroad,
their policy is in direct antagonism to everybody else. Its origin
was an unpatriotic, selfish, dishonest desire to avoid the payment of
honest debts to their full amount. Our high-toned, honorable capi-
talists and merchants found when the legal tender act was passed
that they could take advantage of the Government's necessities, and
get a discharge from their debts by paying them in depreciated cur-
rency. When this sneaking repudiation had been achieved, our
money kings found that they could make semi-treason doubly profit-
able ; for having paid their own debts with a depreciated currency,
they could now, by keeping that currency out of the State as a cir-
culating medium, have a monopoly of money lending. So long as
greenbacks did not come to California, there was no danger that
eastern capitalists would send money here to invest, as its transfer
would involve a loss of from 12 to 50 per cent. Though the inter-
est here was double what it was in New England on securities
equally safe, yet who would bring his money here to invest it,
when a toll or reduction of two years' interest would be the condi-
tion of its introduction ? With this import tax on money, it is no
wonder that it does not come here ; no wonder that Ave have so lit-
tle manufacturing ; no wonder that our streets are full of men and
boys willing to work, but who can find nothing to do. To establish
varied industries in California, requires the influx of large capital ;

— 24 —

that influx would reduce the rate of interest, and therefore the Shy-
locks of California have decreed that the national currency shall
not be tolerated on this Coast. They are and ever have been finan-
cial rebels, whom, both during and since the Avar, have kept Califor-
nia in a state of semi-rebellion.

This monopoly of capital is well-nigh absolute here. The very
man who paid off his own debts at the East in greenbacks, will
publicly post his neighbor as a swindler if he attempts the same
thing on himself. This he may be loath to do, but his masters, the
great capitalists on whom he depends for accommodation, will
tolerate no disloyalty among their subjects. Gold, gold, gold, that
must be his standard of patriotism, morality, and religion ; and he
who refuses homage to the golden calf, is set upon and followed
with the cry of" mad dog." When Treasurer Cheeseman undertook
to convince you that it was your duty as well as your interest to
be loyal and true to the Union, you mobbed him and threatened
him with death ; and yet, had you followed his advice, you would
have saved from five to ten milhons at least annually to the State
of California.

That this is so is apparent when you consider that, if gold and
silver were the only currency throughout the United States, prices
nominally would everywhere be very much less^than they are.
The man of a hundred thousand, and the man of ten thousand,
would count his wealth as nominally one-half or two-thirds of what
it now is. Yet for exchange or purchase of other property, it
would buy as much as now. He would, in fact, be just as rich, for
the emission of paper does not create wealth. It does, however,
inflate prices in nominal values, so that what we import from the
East costs us from 30 to 50 per cent, more in gold than it would
were there no paper money in existence, and everything was kept
down to a specie basis. We have always paid (as well before the
war, when the bills of solvent banks were at par, as ever since
greenbacks were invented) for the goods we have imported from
the Eastern States at the inflated prices caused by the use of
paper money ; and hence it is as clear as the sun at noonday, that
our gold has not the same purchasing power as it would have were
it the exclusive currency throughout the whole country. And it is
equally clear that if the money necessary for the business of this
State were here and in greenbacks, prices of everything else would
partake of the inflation of the East. True, our wheat and our
wool would bring no more in foreign markets, but our gold and our
silver would buy more domestic goods in Eastern markets.

Our adherence to a metallic currency, does not in the least save
us from the panics and fluctuations of the East. When gold goes
up in Wall Street, the effect is instantly felt on California Street.

A few months since, and there was a rise in the price of gold of
nearly ten per cent, in New York. Instantly every man who owed
anything at the East, gathered up all the gold he could get and sent
it forward, as it would buy more greenbacks, and consequently pay
off more debts than it would have done a few weeks earlier, or
probably a few weeks later. And in this later panic, which is
hardly yet over, San Francisco has felt the effects as much as any
city in the Union in proportion to her population. This panic
scarcely reached here, yet vast sums of gold were quietly sent for-
ward to be loaned out at a half cent, cent or cent and a half per
day, should the panic last as long as our Midases hoped for.

But for the fact that our vast grain crop was just going forward
to be drawn against, our mcney lenders would have had a golden
harvest. By refusing extensions and demanding higher margins,
they would have gathered all the securities possible, in the way of
mortgages, bonds and stocks, into their own hands ; and when the
storm cleared away they would have been some millions of dollars
richer ; for the little fish would have been swallowed up by the big
whales, for whose benefit the gold currency is maintained.

The great, greatest want of California is home manufactures.
They are wanted to give employment to our men, and boys, and
girls. They are required to create a home market for the agricul-
turists. But interest is too high to justify investments in manufact-
uring, and will be so until we change our currency. With that change
millions of money will come here from the East, so many and vast
enterprises will be undertaken, so many new fields of labor that
every man and every boy can find such occupation, at fair wages,
as his tastes and capacity fit him for. At present if there be an
appalling, a frightful aspect in our future, it is in the fearful
growth of what in the language of the street is called hoodlumism.
Our best citizens, the substantial workingmen of the city, those who
read the papers, pay most of the taxes, and as they sway this
way or that carry the elections, who when they had sons born
to them, rejoiced and hoped to bring them up in the paths of in-
dustry and virtue, to be like themselves good and useful members
of society, find as their boys are growing to early manhood that
there is no place for them. They are not needed ; there is no
field of useful employment open to them. They cannot be appren-
ticed to learn trades, for the monopoly of labor enjoyed by the
trades union will not allow the manufacturing capitalists to take
apprentices. The artizan or mechanic who cries out loudly against
other combinations, attends caucuses and marches in torchlight
processions, shouting " down with monopolies," considers that his own
trades union has a vested right to do all the labor in his peculiar
line, and that whoever attempts to act independent of their organi-
zation is a common enemy to be destroyed.

— 26 —

I can imagine no more gloomy house than that of the worthy in-
dustrious man and wife, who have several sons from twelve to
twenty years of age. As children, they have always been sur-
rounded by good home influences, and could their vital powers be
directed to useful occupations, they would become honest men and
useful citizens. But the father can find nothing for them to do.
His own time is taken up in providing for them food and clothing.
The boys cannot be idle. They must be at work, or they soon get
into mischief. They form acquaintances among the vicious, and
the parents soon loose all control over them. They wander about
at late hours, and the father and mother, as they sit at the family
hearthstone at the close of a hard day's toil, have no longer any
pleasant topics of conversation. They hear the shout of the hood-
lum in the street, and with fear and trembling they listen, dreading
lest the door open and their own joy of other days, their first-born,
should enter staggering and drunk ; or they fear the greater sor-
row of hearing that in a drunken brawl he has broken the head of
some comrade or Chinaman, and been taken up to prison.

0, it is terrible to think of the array of youth that are groAving
up in California to be thieves and vagabonds. Hundreds and
thousands of parents see their children going in the broad road to
destruction, and they have no power to hold them back. The
youthful energy must find vent and spend itself in useful occupation,
or it will carry them to perdition. But the monopolists of capital
will tolerate no change that will bring money from abroad to be
loaned at so low a rate of interest as to justify the establishment of
home manufactures and other varied industries in which this sur-
plus of youthful energy might be employed. Let the parents of
those children, then, bear in mind that our own richest men, who for
their own purposes are keeping out the national currency, and
thus making the field of industry as contracted as possible, are
coining their extra interest from the very blood, the bodies, and
• souls of their children, who by them are driven into the ways of
vice, and crime, and death.

And yet this monopoly, with all its disastrous effects, its crushing
influences on the State's prosperity, its filling the country Avith.
hoodlums, candidates for the State Prison and the gallows, is sus-
tained and justified by the self-styled independent press. Those
papers which enjoy the monopoly of the Western Union telegraph,
with its complement of the Associated Press, maintain that this
monopoly of capital is a blessed thing. Well they may. The
proprietors are all of the mOney-lencling class, and they see that
the rate of interest on their loans must come down with the intro-
duction of greenbacks. They may well sustain monstrous monop-
olies, for they have no young hoodlums in their families to cause

— 27 —

them anxiety, and what matters it to them that the sons of other
men are driven into the ways of temptation.

But what is the remedy ? A repeal of the specific contract law
would now be ineffective, as the Supreme Court of the United
States has declared such contracts legal and binding. The State
Legislature can do much towards affecting a change, and if the
needed legislation could be had and be sustained by the farming
community, the thing would be accomplished. In the first place,
people should be familiarized with the national currency, and to
effect this a law should be passed that all taxes should be collected
in greenbacks, and all salaries of State officials paid in the same
currency. As the general impression now is that salaries are too
high, this would be an excellent way to reduce them from 6 to 12
per cent., at the same time that a vast service avouM be done to the
public at large, by the forced introduction of this amount of cur-
rency as a circulating medium. And our patriotic law-makers, it
is to be presumed, would not be influenced by their own selfish in-
terest in a measure so fraught with blessings to their constituents.
They would doubtless delight to do this, that their conduct might
stand forth to the world in contrast with the Congressmen who voted
themselves increased pay for the future, and gratuities for the past
in the shape of back pay. If the railroad would imitate these
patriotic legislators, and reduce the rate of fare and freight to the
extent of the difference between gold and greenbacks, and never
receive at their offices and stations anything but currency, that
more than almost anything else would force people to use greenbacks
to a considerable extent, and their introduction into the country
would doubtless so stimulate enterprise and immigration that it
would be more than repaid by the increase of business.

If to these influences towards the introduction of the national
currency, that of the farmers were joined, the thing would be done.
If the Grangers would organize into a self-protecting society against
the monopolists of* the capital, and resolve to sell their wheat and
their wool for greenbacks only, but at their equivalent in gold,
they could compel the introduction of sufficient paper money to
make it the circulating medium of the State. They have but to
stand together.

Were it not that this address had run to so great a length, I
would like to consider the transition state of society, of commerce,
and civilization in various branches. Owing to the extension of
railroads into remote regions, which but a few years ago could con-
tribute nothing towards supplying the markets of the world, vast
tracts of before uncultivated lands are now made to contribute to
the sustenance of the human family. The food produced now /"'as
compared with former times, is in proportion to the population, very

— 28 —

much increased. Such vast tracts of land, that until recently
blossomed only to the desert air, are now brought so near a labor-
ing population, by means of the improvements in transportation,
that they are made to furnish food for millions in the more populous
parts of the world. Every year the extension of the railroads into
the remoter regions of the United States, towards the wilds of
Russia, or over the pampas of South America, bring countless acres
under the plow, whose products come into competition with those
from the old grain-growing regions. Hence, it is hardly possible
that the cereals of California can long be exported with profit to
the producer. Owing to short crops, this season in Europe, the
price of grain is high, and farming throughout the United States is
well remunerated. Another year, and with full crops in Germany,
France, and on the borders of the Black Sea, there may be no
demand for our surplus wheat in any part of the world. What,
then, will our farmers do for a market ? Will they say that next
year will be as this year, and to-morrow shall be as this day, and
more abundantly ? then Wisdom will say, " thou fool ! boast not
thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a clay may bring
forth." Prudence, forecast, and statesmanship would say, "now
is the time to embark in varied industries, to establish factories, to
commence the raising of cotton, silk, tobacco, and every useful in-
dustry that shall give employment to men, and women, and boys,
and shall not, at the same time, add to the threatened surplus of
cereals." With such a population, that shall always furnish a home
market to the producer, California would be independent and self-
supporting, and with their superior natural advantages,, her peo-
ple might become the richest and most highly favored in the world.
But the influence of labor-saving machinery in extending the
acreage of land available for tillage, is but one phase of the revo-
lution wrought by modern inventions. They have not only prac-
tically increased the number of food-producing acres, but they
have diminished, by three-quarters, the amount of labor necessary to
secure the comforts of life. In times not far remote, and even in
the memory of men not yet old, it required, in order to get the food
and clothing necessary for life and health, that nearly every man,
and woman too, should labor, and labor hard for ten, twelve, or four-
teen hours a day. Those of us who are middle-aged men can remem-
ber how hardly were earned the first few dollars which we could call
our own. We can also remember how little money was in circula-
tion, and that the hardiest men were glad to labor from before sun-
rise till after sunset, for ten, twelve, or fourteen dollars per month.
And these prices were all the farmers could afford to pay. They
were obliged to work themselves as hard as any of their men, in
order to feed, and clothe, and school their children, and yet make

— 29 —

the two ends meet. They must rigidly economize to keep out of
debt ; and the most the farmer could produce, that would bear
transportation to market, must go to get money to pay taxes, and
such other things as salt, tea, coifee, and sugar, in such quantities
as could be afforded. Of this, one-half was consumed in getting
the other half to market ; so that what now would be considered a
meager living was about all that the most thrifty and industrious
could get for their incessant toil. But times have changed.. The
inventor has scotched the old serpent, and labor-saving machinery
has lifted the heavy burdens from the sons of toil. The steam
engine, the reaper, the thresher, the spinning-jenny, » and the
thousand modern inventions, have so multiplied the powers of pro-
duction that not one-third, perhaps not one-fourth, of the manual
labor is now required to secure the necessaries and comforts of life
that it took forty years ago. Now shall capital get all the benefits
of these improvements ? Shall the hours of labor be the same as
when it took them four times the amount of human toil that it
does now to secure the comforts of life ? I say, no ; labor has a
right to share with capital the blessings that the world has derived
from the inventor's brains. It the man of toil must now work the
same number of hours as formerly to make a bare living, what
advantageth it him that Watt, and Whitney, and McCormick, and
Howe, and Woodworth, have ever lived ? The benefits nearly all
go to the rich, whose accumulations would have startled their fa-
thers ; and as the iron hands of the steam-engine do the work of
human sinews, the competition in the field of labor is made more
sharp, and the laborer is left more completely at the mercy of the
employer, because of labor-saving machinery.

Now though capital has ever striven to retain all these advan-
tages to itself, nevertheless, some of the conveniences and luxuries
unknown to the laboring classes fifty years ago, come now within
their reach. The man dependent on his daily toil even now,
if he would feed and clothe his family comfortably, and educate his
children, must labor hard and make his clays long. But there is no
necessity for n*en to labor as they used to for the bare necessaries
of life. As with the advantages of modern inventions, not more
than a third part of the manual labor is required to secure the
means of support as formerly ; it follows that if men labor now as
they did then, and yet get but a bare living, the larger part of the^v
earnings go to swell the gains of the rich. Hence we see colossal
fortunes accumulating on every hand, and in their train follow lux-
ury, immorality, and extravagance. The very submission of the
many to excessive and unnecessary labor, serves but to pamper the
depraved tastes and vices of the few. It is not only the right, but
the duty of the laboring classes to refuse to labor as did their

— 30 —

fathers. Eight hours a day, as a rule, will be enough, if two-thirds
or one-half can be employed for that number of hours, to produce
all that is demanded for the health and comfort of the entire peo-
ple ; and when the laboring classes submit to do more, the excess
goes only to the luxuries and hoardings of the rich.

The inequalities of fortune constitute one of the greatest dangers
to a republican form of government. They encourage profligacy
in the rich, and cause discontent and vice in the poor. Excessive
luxury is always the harbinger of dissolution. Hence I regard the
eight-hour movement as a healthful and hopeful sign ; and though
the efforts of some of its advocates to enforce their measures by law-
less interference with the liberty of others, is not to be justified nor
tolerated, yet the fundamental idea of less hours to the laborer is
patriotic and right, and its supporters are justified in endeavoring
by all legal and moral means, to make it the rule and usage.

I have thus spoken of the living issues before the country. But
what are measures or theories, or even laws, as compared with a
high moral standard among the masses of the people ? Long ex-
perience has demonstrated that no theory of state-craft, no code
of laws, no constitutional guarantees, can be made to avail against
general ignorance and immorality. Only an intelligent and an
honest people can long preserve individual liberty and equal rights.
Corruption in high places, if allowed to pass unrebuked, is sure to
be followed and imitated by the masses, till such a thing as political
morality is the exception, and official honesty unknown. To this
general depravity succeeds anarchy, which in turn is always fol-
lowed by violence and ends in despotism. History, if it teaches
nothing else, teaches this ; and it would be well if the people of
California would now consider their own moral bearings, and ask
themselves whether or no those who are the loudest in their outcry
against salary grabs and back pay steals are not indulging in the
veriest cant and hypocricy. That the people should be disgusted
and indignant at the passage of such Acts by Congress is but
natural, and it is a healthful sign that it is so ; but are not those
who are loudest and fiercest in denouncing all who voted for the
back pay and increased salary bill, and President Grant who
signed it, quite indifferent to the moral obliquity of their own
leader and champion, who worked for and approved a bill giving to
himself both back pay and increased salary ? Did he not violate
the Constitution he had sworn to support by signing a bill that he
knew contained an unconstitutional proviso which increased his
own salary, and then drawing the money with eager haste ?

During the last political canvass, who so loud as our doughty Gov-
ernor in denouncing President Grant for signing a bill that Increased
his own pay for his incoming term. Who, too, was so bitter in his ob-
jurgations of those Congressmen that voted themselves back pay for

— 31 —

the past, and increased pay for the future ? But, alas ! the contortions
his body, as he gesticulated his indignation, rattled the money in
his own pocket that had been obtained by a salary grab and a
back-pay steal. Had we a Nast among us to illustrate the beau-
tiful consistency of our Governor, he should represent him with his
mouth open, rolling forth indignant scorn of the thieves and grabbers
who had soiled their fingers with back pay and Credit Mobilier
Stock ; his right hand raised and outstretched to give emphasis to
his words, while his left was slyly stuffing in his pocket the bill he
had just signed, giving himself an additional thousand dollars a year.

But though our Governor abused his trust, and disgraced the
State by his action in the California increased salary grab and
back pay steal, we, the citizens of California, have one consolation.
He did not sell himself so cheaply as did Schuyler Colfax. The
late Vice-President received only $1,200 from that fund, which was
distributed where it would do the most good ; but do you think
our Governor, the head of the purity and reform party in Cali-
fornia, would sell himself so cheap as that ? No. I scorn the
insinuation, and, as a citizen of California, jealous of her good
name, I repudiate the idea that her Governor would try to rob the
State, unconstitutionally, for the paltry sum of $1,200. That he
has done it for $1,000 is now known to all, and when we compare
the political morality of the East with that of California, we may
take comfort to ourselves from the fact that our leading men hold
themselves at a higher price for cash than do those beyond the
Rocky Mountains, and that as 1,000 is to 1,200, so is California
virtue to that of Indiana. The price of our statesmen at Sacra-
mento is more than three times as high as it is at Washington.
Let us, then, hear no more about corruption in California politics
among the purity and reform leaders.

Now I do not claim to be so much better than other people that
I feel it my especial duty to expose their faults and shortcomings,
and it is not from any pleasure I take in commenting on the errors
of a man holding high position, that I make this allusion to Gover-
nor Booth. As Governor, or prospective Senator, the individual
Newton Booth concerns me very little. But the callous, stupid
indifference of the people to everything like common honesty in
their public servants, does concern me and concerns everybody.
The shameless effrontery of people who vaunt their own virtue be-
cause they denounce the faults and corruption of their political op-
ponents, while they rally around a man who is guilty in the con-
crete of all they denounce in the abstract, evinces a state of moral
obtuseness and profligacy of a most dangerous and threatening
character.

During the late political canvass in this tState, the people did

not seem to know or care whether or no their candidates had or
affected to have common honesty. The two men in whose interest
it seemed to be mainly conducted did not even affect enough hon-
esty to hold them to their pledges. No matters of practical states-
manship were discussed, no question of higher law or natural right ;
no measures of specific relief from the tyrannizing power of monop-
olies, but only appeals to secure the election of this man or that
man to the United States Senate. And yet, though the friends of
one of them, who were working night and day to compass his elec-
tion by representing that he was not a candidate and not in the
canvass, not even in California, no notice was taken of the attempted
fraud, as people seemed to think that if he could win by the trick
it would be proper and legitimate, and they would console them-
selves with the miserable saying that all is fair in politics.

The other man for whom that campaign was carried on, also was
not a candidate. It was not that his friends had said he was not,
and that he was trying to take advantage of their denial. But he
had explicitly and publicly said, when running for the governorship,
that under no circumstances would he, if elected, be a candidate
for another position during his official term. Indeed, he could not
honestly and decently accept an election to the Senate, for he
would be under contract with the people to serve through his term.
It would be dishonest for him to accept, even if elected — dishonest
was the word he used, and should we not take the word of a Gov-
ernor that he would not do an act that he himself had stigmatized
as dishonest?

Now the temptation to accept the office of U. S. Senator is very
gre..c, especially to a man who has resorted to dark and dishonest
ways to obtain his election. Hence, after the shameful duplicity
exhibited by both Gorham and Booth when canvassing before the
people, and the liberality of Casserly when negotiating for the seat
he now holds, I do not look for such Spartan virtue in any one of
them as that he should decline it if offered to him. If people will
vote for men who can be candidates only at the sacrifice of honor
and truth, the inference is, that they prefer men who are destitute
of those qualities — men who will break their pledges Avithout scru-
ple, and who, if censured for their violation, can turn to their con-
stituents with the sneering reply that they were elected as pledge-
breakers, as the representatives of untruth, the scoffers at honesty,
the despisers of virtue and fidelity.

But the fact that now and then a dishonest or unworthy man at-
tains high position, is of little importance if the moral atmosphere is
kept pure, and a high standard of integrity is maintained by the
masses of the people. So long as the moral sense of the commu-
nity is kept elevated and pure, no one individual can work serious

— 33 —
»

barm or danger. But when people grow indifferent whether or no
their public servants have even common honesty, so that they rep-
resent some party interest or private scheme, then indeed are we
drifting on the rocks of destruction. Then must the old ship Re-
public ere long founder, from inherent rottenness. The degene-
racy which begets indifference to official morality, is the sign of na-
tional decay ; of a death that has no resurrection.

13
ANNUAL ADDRESS

Hon. Ad' A* SARGENT.

DELIVERED BEFORE

The California State Agricultural Society, at tJie Pavilion, Sacramento,
on, piursday Evening, September IStJi, 1873.

PRACTICAL QUESTIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY— CAL-
IFORNIA COTTON— THE GRAIN MARKETS OF THE
WORLD, AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON GRAIN-
GROWING IN CALIFORNIA— DIVERSITY
OF CROPS— TRANSPORTATION.

Tlie Hailroaci Question!

* « <♦» » »

The Illinois Railroad Law— Government Purchase of Railroads
The Future of the Railroad Problem.

•m n <m> I ■■'

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: The object of your annual Fair
upon the great success of which I congratulate you, is primarily the promotiot
of farming interests. This you seek to accomplish by the exchange of prac-
tical ideas, by encouraging the development of new industries, and by the dis
covery of improved modes of performing old processes. You seek to enhaac;
the intrinsic value of articles produced, by rewards from a common fund fo
exceptional excellence, and you benefit yourselves and the State by raising th
worth, while lessening the cost, of the vast range of agricultural productions
The motive here operative, is the principal cause of the progress which th
civilized world has gained, since the middle ages, in the improvement of th
arts of life, and in human comfort. Hallam draws a picture of the farmer'
house in England, in the time of Henry YIIL, with its one room and onestorv
Without chimney, the fire was kindled in the center, the smoke finding its way

c . .

■

out, as in an Indian wigwam, through a hole in the roof, or through the un-
glazed openings left at the sides for light and air. The domestic animals of all
kinds were housed under the same roof. While this was the condition of the
farmer, the noble and" wealthy 'had none of the comforts that to-day are indis-
pensable to the poorest classes. Wainscoted or plastered rooms were unknown,
as were carpets, window glass, or even beds and chairs, except as a rare luxury.
The tools of the farmer, and of all mechanics, were few in number, and of the
rudest description. The labor-saving machinery that now almost thinks, and
that multiplies by many million fold, the productive capacity of man, had not
even a rudimentary existence. The energios of steam were unsuspected. The
intelligence' that lives in the lightning flash had made no sign. From then to
now, how vast the interval — not of time, merely, but of the condition of the
producing classes ! From the shrouded past peer forth ignorance and inca-
pacity, famine and misery and squalor, unwholesome as the exhalations of a
tomb. Need I compare with all this the condition of the farmer or artisan of
the present day, and especially in this favored land ? Look' around you for
evidences of comfort and material prosperity, excelling the visions of prophetic
days; for'^igenious inventions that would have sent their constructors to a
wizard's stake in the olden time ; for a beauty and perfection that no poet could
have depicted for elysian fields !

What has wrought all these changes in favor of mankind ? It is the spirit
of doubt and investigation; of encouragement to enterprise ; of bounty to well
doing. It is the ascendency and association of practical, inventive men; an
ascendency gradually acquired as they fathomed the secrets of nature and
gained power by arming themselves from her arsenal. Each generation, now
that the true path has been found, advances beyond the point reached by its
predecessors, until the horizon of human skill and knowledge and achievement
is unlimited. What can rationally be declared impossible in the light of the
discoveries of the nineteenth century ? The apparent and admitted laws of
Nature have been reversed by results attained by a truer insight into those
laws. A statement of the facts now elementary would have been declared ab-
surd ten years before the discovery of the electric telegraph. An able scientist
discouraged the project to propel a vessel by steam across the Atlantic, upon
philosophic principles, that only experiment and success could answer. Forty
years ago it was admitted that in the rarified air of the summit of the Kooky
Mountains, water would boil at so low a temperature that not enough steam
could be made to propel a locomotive. The lesson we learn is, that there is an
unlimited field for investigation, enterprise and invention; and that practical
men in every department of life are those who enrich the world with an accu-
mulated wealth of ideas, tending to equalize the condition of mankind, diffuse
tiie comforts of life, and build up material prosperity.

The Gain the World Makes

In each generation by such agencies is the higher average of the means of indi-
vidual comfort, education and independence. Favored by equal laws, that are
the offspring of our civilization, the poor man of to-day may be the rich man
of to-morrow, and, pressed by competition or misled into ruinous investments,
the rich man of to-day may be poor to-morrow. No law conserves the colossal
fortune; no law prevents its honest acquisition. The ancient antagonism
between the producing and accumulating classes is measurably stilled, because,
by the exchange of his surplus products, the producer becomes the accumu-
lator. The world is becoming rich enough to spare from accumulated hoards
the means to test new inventions, to create new industries, to provide broader
bases both for production and for commerce, which effects exchanges. Thus

capital is not left to rust, or to be expended only in vicious pleasures, while
those who have it not perish in want ; but is turned to account for human
improvement and happiuess, by fostering those arts and enterprises which
create, combine and perpetuate the powers and agencies by which the wants
of mankind are supplied. Dissolve all associations of capital and nearly every
spindle in the world would cease to revolve, every steamship cease to ply the
ocean and railroad to cross the land; the telegraph would no longer flash
intelligence to the uttermost parts of the earth, and the general industries that
enrich some, and feed and clothe all, would fall into disuse or be ineffectively
pursued. The genius and necessities of the age forbid this ; while they do not
excuse the selfishness of individuals or associations. Communities and rulers
cannot afford to

Act with Passion or Injustice.

The penalty is not written in the law, but it is surer than the fiat of courts.
King John gave the Jews the choice to part with their money or their teeth.
The result was that capital fled the kingdom, and a money-lender could not be
found in the realm.

I have been led into this train of remark by the recent tenor of public
thought- Summoned to speak to jrou, without wish to do so on my part, I
cannot better employ your time than by a discussion of every-day topics, of
interest to you because they engross your thoughts, and of which I may be
supposed to know more than of agricultural chemistry, the rotation of crops,
or the economy of the farm yard. In this I but follow the example of others
who have made these topics the theme of able addresses delivered before all
the recent State Agricultural Societies of the "West. As a legislator, it has
been my duty to examine some phases of these subjects carefully, with a sense
of responsibility, and I think it is possible to discuss, in the good temper befit-
ting this audience, themes which have been made the occasion of violent
tirade and unreason. In the discussion of such questions, whether by the
press or by public addresses, something very different is needed as a means
than to excite enmity and unchain evil passions; and the end to be attained is
far more important than to promote the fortunes of a politician, or advance the
objects of a faction.

The Most Interesting Question

To the farmers of the "West at the present time is, can the cost of transporta-
tion to distaut markets of. their coarse products be so reduced that these can
be profitably raised? For such States as Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois
and Indiana, remote from the seaboard, and having totally inadequate home
markets for their staples, it is urged that the relation between the producers
and the agencies of transportation should be readjusted. The true policy
would seem to be- fairly divided between each, according to the capital and
labor invested, the profits derived from sales to consumers, when such profits
exist. But where the conditions are such that profit to the producer is impos
sible, even if transportation is offered below cost, where is the remedy ? lows
will produce a million tons surplus of hay, and hay is high in England. Yet sc
small is the value of hay in proportion to its bulk that its transportation to
England would be impossible. Corn and wheat can be transported farthei
than hay, but there is a limit to each of these articles. The real problem is
can both producer and transporter thrive if they equitably share the profit;
resulting from the necessary connection in business ? If it takes all the profiti
of the agriculturist to get his crop to market, or the railroad is compelled bj
law or otherwise to move the crops of a State at a loss, there is something
wrong either in the adjustment of interests or in the nature of business done

If coarse crops cannot be moved to a market where they will pay the farmer
a profit, except at a loss to the transporter that his general business cannot re-
pay, the difficulty is not remedied by

Violence or Revolution.

Other crops must be raised, other industries substituted, or other modes of
transportation invented. A paper in Illinois mildly proposes, as a remedy, that
the French guillotine be set up on the plains of Illinois, and the heads of rail-
road Owners roll in the basket. It further suggests that trains be not allowed to
run through the counties, that the tracks be torn up, bridges burnt, and railroad
hands killed. Here is anarchy; here is license, vulgar in its coarseness, but it
is little less abhorrent when its suggestions are elaborately polished and deli-
cately vailed.

In California, while there is much interest in the question^ it is legs absorb-
ing, because we have access to the sea without such long lines of transporta-
tion. But it must be of importance while our farmers move their grain by
rail, and it should be carefully weighed in an economic rather than in a partisan
aspect. As

A Question of Political Economy

Solely, I propose to discuss it, undeterred by the fear of misrepresentation,
and in the discharge of a duty to the State, which should impartially foster all
interests of capital or labor, whether individual or associated, which are ree-
ognized byl its policy, and by that of civilization generally, as legitimate enter-
prises.

Distance is an important element in controlling the cost of transportation.
Were the Humboldt Valley a great wheat field, the grain-raiser there would
necessarily pay more to transport his products to the sea than one in Napa or
San Jose Valley. At the cheapest possible rate that transportation could be
furnished by competiting lines of railway, enforced by laws that cut down even
below cost the price of conveyance, especially if those laws also operate
in favor of his rival producers, the wheat-cultivator in the Humboldt Valley
might find the competion ruinous between him and his more fortunately
located rival. He could perhaps only hope for a market abroad when there
was a failure of crops in this State, and not then always in competition with
the valleys of the Danube and the plains of Southern Russia. These countries
produce the cereals in perfection, and in wonderful abundance, so that the ports
of the Black Sea have long been held as the unfailing granaries of Europe.
Great Britain is the only commercial nation of the world that needs to look
abroad for bread for its people. France, Germany and the United States, with
about the same population, grow their own breadstuffs, and generally have
each a surplus. It is the world-wide and crushing competition which renders
wheat-growing, even under favorable circumstances, a precarious and unprofit-
able business. Under that competition the remoteness of wheat lands from
the sea is a serious obstacle, perhaps an absolute bar, to success. Discontent
does not remove it, for it can not annihilate comparative distance. Railroad
companies can not overcome it, for they can not create renumerative markets.
No legislation can devise a remedy for this phase of the evil. In this view, is
not California

Growing too much Wheat

To the exclusion of more profitable and diversified industries? To enhance
our population, to save the productiveness of our lands, to insure a certain re-
turn for our capital and labor, must we not turn to new sources of wealth ?

Under such pressure the State of New York left off, in a great degree, the
growing of wheat, and substituted largely the production of butter and cheese.
So did Ohio. Illinois and Indiana have taken to stock-raising, as has Michigan,
and to wool-production. The products of the dairy, the exportation of beef
and pork and wool are found more remunerative than wheat-growing. In so
much there is a concentration of bulk into smaller compass and more propor-
tionate value. Coarse, bulky productions require larger space, and have a
weight disproportionate to their value, and hence are costly to transport. But
by these improved industries they are condensed in bulk and increased in value.
Corn or wheat changed into hogs or cattle is found far more profitable than in
its original shape, and can be transported at rates more likely to leave a profit
for all concerned. But the

Change in our Industries

Should not stop here. The agriculture of New England is progressing rapidly
because its other industries are great and varied.* The two important sources
of productive wealth, manufactures and agriculture, go there hand in hand,
with varied labor and reciprocal benefit. The farmer finds a home market for
his products; the manufacturer furnishes, cheaply, articles of necessity or luxury
to the farmer, and gives employment to the stalwart children of the latter,
which are not needed on the homestead. The transportation question has less
meaning to the farmer, under such circumstances, for the exchange is at his
very door. It is rather a question for the manufacturer, who seeks a market
for his productions in the other States. On the contrary, in California, where
the principal gain of the agriculturist is dependent on the price he can get for
his surplus wheat; where for lack of diversified industry, the home market is
very limited; where, for much that is raised, there is not and can not be
created an adequate demand, it is worth while seriously to consider if the evil
does not lie deeper than is sometimes assumed. If the very lowest cost of
transportation is too onerous a tax for .wheat production, in view of competi-
tion, one remedy is to avoid the transportation by

Creating Manufacturing Centers

In our own State. Says Carey: "It is not until manufactures have been de-
veloped that a market is thus made in the neighborhood of the farm that any
real agriculture makes its appearance." Bowen declares that "If Agriculture
alone is pursued, all the mechanical skill of the people is wasted — all their
fitness for commerce, all their enterprise is wasted." And says Hyatt, " Any
farming community having in' their midst a strong manufacturing center, will
always be found with a. good and sufficient home market for all that may be
produced. Manufactures build up strong commercial and provision-consuming
centers, which are, in fact, the only support to agriculture." Such a center the
wheat-growers of the world seek at a distance in the Liverpool market.

The employment of capital to reach these ends is not ordinarily within
reach of farmers; but I speak not only to farmers but to the people of the
State. Fortunate would we be if those people having capital would " associate"
to build up these new industries. But farmers .cannot afford to exhaust their
soil for the sake of a small and brief profit. Our State is well fitted to produce
wines, silk, fresh and dried fruits, nuts, olive oil, and other articles of the semi
tropical class, which command, a higher price per pound than wheat, with a
greater yield and little more expense to the acre. Our soil and climate give us
a monopoly of these productions on the North American Continent. We must
learn to avail ourselves of this natural advantage. During this year we are im-

porting largely live hogs, ham and bacon. We still import quantities of butter
and cheese, with vast dairy capacities; canned corn and peas, and a long list of
similar articles. Many ot our wheat-farmers do not raise their own potatoes
or fruit. They # are strangers, except by purchase, to milk and butter, eggs
and meat. Can there be a better occasion to rebuke such improvidence?
There are unquestionably pleasant homes on many of our farms and ranches,
but many of them seem mere camping places, mere temporary shelters. The
traditional homestead is not often enough realized, embelished with flowers
and fruit trees, where at

" parting day

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea;"

But all is rude, untasteful and temporary. So far as this is incident to a new
country it may be excused. But California is now in its majority, and it is
full time for an improvement that brings not merely grace, beauty and comfort,
but also profit. The more the farmer does to supply his own wants, the less
outlay of money to purchase necessaries, and the less need for payment for
expensive transportation.

California Cotton.

One article of agricultural production shows what this State is doing; what
it can and should do. During this year three hundred thousand pounds of
cotton have been raised in California. The article is nearly as good as Sea
Island cotton, is very strong, and is just what is needed to mix with wool for
the fabrics produced at our woolen mills. One mill alone uses four hundred
thousand pounds per annum, and all the mills together use three times as much
as is raised in this State. These are suggestive facts in the line of action which
I have indicated.

It has been urged as a reason why manufactures can not flourish in this State
that we have but half a million of people, while such industries in the East
have a market of nearly forty, millions. In answer, it may be said that our
woolen manufacturers compete successfully with those of other States in the
East, and that forty per cent, of their goods finds a market beyond this State.

If a fair proportion of the §50,000,000 in the Savings Banks of the State
could be invested in the industries that build up other communities, the State
would be vastly the gainer- Perhaps it is too much to expect while such banks
pay twelve per cent, dividends from loans on real estate. But it is to be an-
ticipated that such a system will entail embarrassment while it continues, and
we import one half the necessaries we consume.

I have stated the general proposition that the relation between producers
and the

Agencies of Transportation

Should be so adjusted as to equitably divide between each the profits derived
from sales to consumers of the products; but have tried to show that when,
either by distance from market, or by too great competition, the product brings
no profit or sales, the rule would leave the transporter without compensation.
If the wheat-grower in Alameda county, handy to the ship, can, by sending
his grain to Liverpool, barely make both ends meet, one four hundred miles
more remote can only send his to that market at a loss, unless he gets his
transportation for nothing, which is absurd. In such case one man's capital is
used for another man's business without compensation, or the general business
interests of the community are burdened that one may unduly thrive. The
fact is, transportation should be furnished as low as running expenses, wear and
tear, repairs and maintenance, necessary outlay for interest and moderate re-

turn for capital will allow, and be rated according to distance, in which grades
and curves are a dominant element, the frequency of loading and discharging,
the character of the cargo and the amount of traffic. These elements consti-
tute the true rule, and must all be considered in making up a freight tariff. It
is inequitable to add another, viz: that wheat or other coarse products must be
4 transported at such rates as to make the raising of wheat, or such other prod-
ucts, profitable, no matter what the distance or what the price of wheat in
the market. Yet, substantially, this latter idea h'as been diligently fostered
and railroad companies held up as enemies to the farmer because they do not
conform to it. I am not here to assert that rates of transportation in this
State do not exceed those which would result from the rule I have stated.
Others, who have made the matter a study, can speak as to that. In a table
published by the Overland for this month, I find that the rate of freight between
San Francisco and Colfax per 100 pounds for first-class freight is 53 cents; for
second-class, 50 cents; for third-class, 40 cents! On the Illinois Central Rail-
road, under their new railroad law, to which I shall presently refer, the rates
for the same class of freight, for the same distance are respectively 63 cents,
53 cents and 43 cents. For the mountain division of the Central Pacific Rail-
road, between Rocklin and the Summit, an increase of grade of each twenty
feet per mile is equal to an additional mile on a level. An equalization of
grades over the Livermore Pass would greatly increase the distance. The
Illinois road runs through a prairie country, and its business is enormously
greater than that of any road in this State.

Legislative Regulation of Railroads.

But the reformed railroad law of Illinois may be too liberal. If freights
and fares are too high, how shall they be regulated ? One plan is for the Legis-
lature to take the matter in hand and remedy all evils. A wise committee of
experienced men, acting from reason and not prejudice, and influenced by
justice rather than spite, might be able to submit a plan to the Legislature that
would do justice to all parties. Such a committee would have to consider that
a ton of silk worth $50,000 would have to pay a higher price for transporta-
tion than a ton of hay worth $15. Mirrors and carboys of acid could not travel
at the same rate as sheet-iron and molasses. If valuable and condensed prod-
ucts do not pay well for transportation, coarse and bulky products can have no
discrimination in their favor, and the new burden is laid on those who now
most complain. It must be admitted that from some source an income must
be derived sufficient to bear the necessarj* expenses. If a low uniform rate is
laid on all articles, it must be higher than the present low rates, and in prac-
tice the low rates will be brought up. One difficulty in legislative regulation
is want of experience of the average legislator in the complex matters of a
railroad freight tariff.

Governor Carpenter, of Iowa, in an address before the Agricultural Society
of that State, wherein he dwelt with great force upon the need for a modifica-
tion of the. rates of transportation, said:

" 1 am not prepared to say that a Legislature can successfully and wisely
fix a schedule of tariff charges upon commodities exchanged and distributed by
means of railway transportation ; and, in fact, am inclined to the opinion that
it is impracticable, as it seems to me that no ordinary enactment would either
be sufficiently flexible to meet the changing processes of commerce, or the
increasing wants of the country."

He holds the opinion that it would be difficult in the general traffic of the
country to so hedge the railroads by statutes as not to allow them some discre-
tion as to charges. But he holds that there is a limit on all articles above

which they ought not to be permitted to advance their rates. There is, prob-
ably, the safe extent to which legislation on this point can go, if that limit can
be ascertained — as it can if inquired for in a spirit of candor.

Charles Francis xidams, Jr., has given much thought to this matter, and has
written ably and voluminously upon it in the reports of the .Railroad Commis-
sioners of Massachusetts and in the North American Review. In the report of
the Commissioners for January, 1873, drawn up by him, they discuss the ques-
tion of the expediency of legislative action, and say:

" Under the effect of competition the laws intended to be applicable to one
class become applicable to those of another; there is no discrimination as re-
gards special requirements either of localities or of corporations, provided they
fall within the line of classification ; and a passenger road may find itself on
the same footing as a mineral road; it. is almost an impossibility that any
measure can be framed at once sufficiently precise and sufficiently flexible to
meet the requirements of so complex a system, and even were it possible to
frame it, it is extremely improbable that it could pass the ordeal of any legisla-
tive body.

"The final difficulty with all legislation of this class is its excessively dan-
gerous and politically corrupting tendency. It forces the corporations, whether
they wish to come there or not, into the lobby of the Legislature and the rooms
of Committees and Commissioners. They are forced there for the protection
of their interests; for the essence of the system is, that certain persons, whether
the Legislature itself or officials designated by the Legislature, have devolved
upon them the responsibility of establishing the revenues of property belonging
to others. The Commissioners have grave doubts of the success of any efforts
at the regulation of the railroad system, which practically effects a separation
between the ownership of a railroad and its management."

Illinois Reformed Railroad Law.

The result of legislative arrangement of freights in Illinois, if the New York
Tribune and other Eastern papers are to be believed, has not been satisfactory
o the people of that State. The currents of business have been disturbed, and
tnportant advantages have passed from Chicago and other cities of the State to
ival cities in other States. As this law was the peculiar product of the antag-
mists of the railroads, devised in the interest of the producing classes; as elec-
ions even o± Judges have been affected by their construction of it; it is inter-
sting to note its effects as an example of the best that could be done, with
eecnt lights, upon the subject. The principle of the law is that there shall not
.ea greater charge for carrying freights a certain distance than for a greater
distance; preventing any preference to through over local business, to large
over small shipments. No attention can be paid to competing lines, or to com-
peting points; and no discrimination in favor of new industries, or to towns
seeking to create them. Half a car-load left at an intermediate point, at which
there is little business, must not be charged for at a higher proportionate rate
than a full car-load carried beyond to a general distributing point, or where
there is competition with rival roads. One result is that where there are two
routes between given points, the shorter must be favored at the expense of the
other, though there may be no difference in the running time. The Illinois
Commissioners are said to have announced that they understand that this law
prohibits discrimination in shipments carried in the State, though made to or
from points outside of it. Freights carried across the State must be charged
for at the rate of long local freights. As many of .the Illinois roads have ter-
mini on the east bank of the Mississippi, and by the addition of a mile or two
reach the Iowa or Missouri bank, where they receive the traffic of roads from

the west, under this tariff Iowa or Missouri must stop shipping their coarse
products, or find routes to the east that do not cross Illinois. That being so,
the local business of Illinois on such roads must support them, without the
help afforded by through freights, and the roads must either carry at a loss, or
charge higher local rates. The through freights that pay part of the income
of the companies, though the profit on that business was small, under such a
law will necessarily be turned off to the Milwaukee and St. Paul and the Lake
Superior and Mississippi roads, and grain must be carried up the Mississippi to
La Crosse and St. Paul, instead of down to Dunleith and Fulton, or down the
Mississippi to New Orleans. The railroad law of Illinois, as construed, is an
impassable barrier to the Iowa and Missouri shipper.

The aim of the Illinois law is to equalize through and local freights. The
assumption is made that through freights are profitable, and local freights on
the same scale will, therefore, pay. This is independent of the question
whether the average of freight is too high or too low. Where a railroad must
make, as its gross earnings, $10,000 per mile to pay the cost of maintenance
and a small profit on the investment; if it earns $8,000 by doing the business
that is necessarily given to it, it is no injury to those whose business it thus
does, if it carries other or through freight at a lower rate, to eke out its neces-
sary income, in cars that would otherwise be idle, and at rates at which it
would be impossible to do the entire business. So far from being an injury, it
is a benefit in that it takes off an expense of $2,000 per mile from local traffic.
Through freight is generally obtained by sharp competition, and is taken if it
can be moved at little above cost of movement; whilst the whole business of
a road must not only pay the cost of movement, but also all expenses of wear
and tear, maintenance, interest on debt and on capital. A large through
business at small profit enables a road to reduce local freights: One of the
errors of the Illinois law seems to be that it may prevent through traffic, and
divert to the cities and roads of other States a profitable business.

How such Law would Operate Here.

Who is prepared to say that precisely similar results would not follow a
similar law here? Before the Pacific Eailroad was built all the exports and
imports of Central and Northern California and Nevada passed through the
Golden Gate, and were handled by the dealers of San Francisco. The great
Panama steamers and numerous sailing vessels crowded the harbor. The city
grew with a rapidity only equaled by that of Chicago under the stimulus of
its new railroads. Real estate reached a high figure. Every rill of prosperity
of the State became an affluent to the tide that enriched the queen city. When
the railroad was. completed it stopped the stream of travel to San Francisco
that formerly took the Isthmus line. Gradually interior merchants began to
find that many articles could be bought cheaper, in the East, and brought here
by rail, than in San Francisco. The tides of business and travel measurably
changed, and San Francisco suffered somewhat thereby. If there were legisla-
tive power in the State to now fix a unit for freight transport, so that freight
coming from Ogden should be charged for in proportion to distance, and way
and through freights be equalized — if freight paid for the distance it passed
over, without regard to competing points, so that companies had no power to
discriminate between through and local freight — the result would be that not a
pound of freight that could be bought in the East would pass over the railroad
from San Francisco to Utah, Nevada, or the mountain towns of California, un-
less the whole trade were drawn off by the Isthmus. Merchants of Reno, Elko
j or Virginia would have no need of business connections with this State. For
! example, the local freight from the Eastern cities to Reno is greater than the

through freight from those cities to San Francisco, plus that from San Francisco
to Reno. Hence Nevada merchants now find it to their interest in many cases
to purchase in California. Give them the advantage of less freight to their own
towns than San Francisco pays, and they have no need to deal in San Fran-
cisco; in fact, cannot afford to do it. Through freights are controlled by com-
petition, and so reduced to the lowest limit. The Panama steamers, Cape Horn
and the Suez Canal all concur to reduce through rates. Local rates beyond the
State line cannot be reached except by Congress. When Congress shall legis-
late upon this subject, it will be little apt to care whether San Francisco or
Chicago gets the trade of the State of Nevada and of Utah Territory.

This question is a little complex, and with your indulgence I will further
illustrate it. The combined legislative action of California and Nevada could
not effect a relief of the interior from the present discrimination in favor of San
Francisco for two reasons:

First — Such legislation could not reach the roads east of Ogden to the Atlantic I
that run in connection with the Central Pacific Eailroad. For instance, freights
at New York for San Francisco, in consideration of their being through freights
to the latter city, are charged less rates on the roads between New York and ;
Chicago than would be charged for them if they stopped at Chicago. The
same is true if they pass over the roads from Chicago to Omaha and from
Omaha to Ogden; so that the party who sends his freight through to San
Francisco gets it there on special low conditions. The Eastern companies for
a time refused to make such arrangements, and there were no overland freights.
They consented to it at last to build up an overland business in opposition to
the Isthmus, effecting a large reduction in Isthmus freight charges by the com-
petition. But for points in the interior of this State and in Nevada there is no
Panama competition, and the Eastern roads refuse to carry freights to be deliv-
ered to them at less than the rates which they charge for the ordinary through
business. [Sacramento, like San Francisco, is treated as a fcjgjapeting point.]
It therefore becomes cheaper to pay the diminished througfi;;freights to San
Francisco or Sacramento and local rates back than to pay ordinary rates from
New York to Colfax, Eeno, etc. Under the special through freight system the
Eastern roads contract to deliver the goods at San Francisco or Sacramento, j
put them in sealed cars only to be opened at their destination, and there in
good faith they must be delivered. Now, no law passed by these two States
could compel these Eastern roads to carry these freights as low when they are!
to be delivered in the intei'ior as they now do when sent through to San Fran-
cisco.

Second — If the principle of the Illinois law is adopted, viz : that there shall
not be a greater charge for carrying goods a certain distance than for a greater
distance, and it is construed here as it is there by the Eailroad Commissioners,
to apply to all freight carried in the State, even if brought from points outside
the State, in effect ignoring Isthmus and other competition, then such contracts
as I have referred to with Eastern roads can no longer be made, and the rail-j
road ceases to transport freight overland. It becomes a mere local road. Wei
are thrust back upon the good old times before the railroad to depend on|
the Isthmus and Cape Horn; and the Isthmus route, relieved from a sharp
competition, can enhance its freights at pleasure. How much cheaper goods
can be locally carried in California and Nevada if through freight is shut off,!
may be soon determined.

If Congress should exercise the power that I do not doubt resides in it underl
the Constitution to regulate fares and freights, and should adopt the principles!
of the Illinois law as the basis of its action ; in other words, abolish the dis-;
tinction between through and local freights, and equalize the charges so that ai

uniform addition per mile for all freights must be made; that would
[necessarily shut off overland freights and give the Isthmus a monopoly of the
rade. I may be in error in "thus reasoning upon these matters, and, if so,
desire to be instructed. But my convictions are too deep to be effaced by
abuse, and the interests of this State are too deeply involved for its people to be
satisfied by general declamation or denunciation in response to specific argu-
ment.

Government Purchase of Railroads.

There has been no lack of earnestness in denunciation of railroad manage-
ment and charges, and several plans have been suggested to remedy evils that
exist under the present system.

I believe, with Mr. Adams, that railroad companies cannot be kept out of
the lobby, or out of politics, if the people are continually incited to elect only
their " reliable enemies," and projects are discussed and promoted in Legisla-
tures to regulate their business and diminish their revenues, where malice, or
even well-meaning ignorance, may plunge them into bankruptcy. It may be
in view of the necessarily corrupting tendency of attempts at legislative regu-
lation.of property interests belonging to others than the State, and the possible
injustice that some would intentionally do, that it has been proposed that the
nation should buy and own the railroads. The number of miles of railroad in
the United States is 67,104, costing $3,159,423,000, of which amount $1,511,-
579,000 is an existing bonded debt. No one, with a character to lose, will pro-
pose the confiscation of this property, or otherwise than honest dealings with
its owners, if it is to be purchased. The present debt of .the United States is
about $2, 200,000,000. To buy these roads, even at cost, would bring up the
debt of the United States to about $5,500,000,000.

Such figures are frightful to contemplate in view of the taxation they
would bring. Under the present sharp, and, it is said, exacting management,
this capital pays to its owners less than four per cent, per annum. In the
hands of Government employes, who believes it would pay on the whole one
dollar revenue? To maintain it would be a continual charge on the treasury,
besides $200,000,000 of annual interest on borrowed capital to make the pur-
chase. There is a reasonable jealousy against concentrating power in the
hands of the Government. Here would be an addition of a quarter of a mil-
lion of Government employes to manage railroads, make contracts and fatten
on the spoite. As in every department of the Government, political considera-
tions would induce the selection of agents. Wielded by one will, or for one
purpose, the liberties of the people might well be in danger. The lives and
property of the community would be exposed to hazards heretofore unknown.
Where would be the remedy for the injury to goods or persons? The Govern-
ment cannot be sued. It would do the business exclusively of the common
carrier without any of his responsibility and but few of his precautions, now
enforced by absolute liability. Eailroad building would stop, for the great
debt of the Government would preclude its engaging in it; and the theory of
its acquisition of existing roads would exclude others from building more. If
the Government should undertake to build more roads, Congress would be the
arena for a disgraceful scramble of different sections to have roads built for
their local convenience. Such an experiment could only be tried where there
was a comparatively strong Government and small territorial area. I have not
time to elaborate this point of a prolific subject. The impropriety of the Gov-
ernment buying up the telegraph lines of the country at a cost of $50,000,000,
to terminate an odious and defiant monopoly, has been strenuously insisted on
as unconstitutional and improvident. How much more does the latter objection
apply to a purchase involving fifty times $50,000,000?

A political writer has depicted the

i
II

12
Railroad of the Future,

When the Government should own the road-beds, consisting of half a dozen
tracks, and any one to run his own trains or car over it. It is doubtful if the
proposition is seriously advanced. The cost of acquiring the road-beds of all
the railroads in the United States and multiplying the tracks as proposed would
leave the figures which I have given as present cost far in the distanoe. But
who would be responsible for the accidents that would result from the irrespon-i
sible management of railways on which any man or body Of men might run
trains? Who would fix time-tables to govern trains of different men, at irregu-j
lar hours and at varying rates of speed, according to individual whims or inter-!
est? Besides the ordinary crowd of officials, State and .National, that such a
scheme would make indispensable, the nuir.ber of Coroners would be neces-
sarily largely increased, and solvent accident insurance companies would
cease to be possible.

Crude schemes like these do not furnish the solution of any difficulties that
there may be in this railroad problem.

Again, cheap freights and fares cannot be promoted by such warfare as

Purposely Cripples Railroads,

Or adds needlessly greater burdens to those they now sustain. It is a mis-i
fortune that some powerful influences, which proffers great zeal to reduce rail
road charges, are very active in devising modes to make the maintenance of
railroads expensive. Any one can recall instances of this inconsistent policy,
I will briefly refer to one such instance. In the last Congress a question arosei
as to whether the Union and Central Pacific Bailroads should pay the interest
that had accrued on their bonds issued by the Government, and the interest
hereafter as it falls due, or whether under the terms of the contract the Gov-
ernment was to pay this interest until the maturity of the bonds, when princi-
pal and interest is to be repaid by the companies, one-half the compensation
for transportation done for the United States, however, to be applied as earned
on the interest. The amount of bonds issued by the Government to the Cen-
tral Pacific Eailroad Company was $25,885,120, the annual interest on which is
over one and a half millions.

Up to this time the company has paid one-half of the transportation money
on the interest, but there remains due for back interest, which the Government
has paid, $6,419,892. To a California Eepresentative, desiring cheap freights
and fares and the welfare of the State, the question was a momentous one.
Shall this matter be so decided that, except for one-half of the transportation
money, this great snm'shall be paid by all the people of the United States — a
payment easily made by a tax of ten cents per gallon on whisky — or shall' it be
paid by the people of California alone? If to the annual expenses of the rail-
road for the next twenty-five years a million and a half dollars are to be added,
that sum must be met out of the proceeds of the road. The interest on the
$6,419,892 must also be annually. paid, bringing up the additional yearly cost
of maintaining the road in the future nearly two million of dollars. To meet
the payment, that amount of money must be annually exported from the
State. Does any one suppose that this will not tighten the pressure on our
money market? That the interests of the State will not suffer? That it
would disastrously affect only a few railroad directors ? On the Union Pacific
the additional annual burden would be about two millions more. Instead of
hoping for any reduction of freights and fares, the prospect, with such added
burdens, would be at least their maintenance at present rates, but probably an
increase. No advantage would be gained by forcing the present companies
into bankruptcy by such means, for the railroad would Cither stop running, or

any new company taking it would have to do so with this burden upon it. Id
any, event, the people of this State would be great sufferers. Therefore, as a

Question of State Policy,

To save an injurious burden being laid upon the industrial interests of the
State, some of your Representatives contended against the new construction of
the liabilities of these companies. For so doing they were roundly abused by
the newspaper guardians of the people, who clamor for lower freights and fares,
but for every expense and injury to those who ai*e to furnish them, which may
tend to make compliance with the demand impossible. I looked in vain at the
ijtime for any statement in those papers as to the effect of an addition of four
millions annually to the expenses of the Pacific Railroad; for any expression of
a fear that such an added burden would keep up or enhance railroad charges;
for any statement of the law which had to be construed under oath ; for any
recognition of any honest motive on the part of those who were striving to
avert the fall of this great load upon the people ; for any admission that when
the Legislature considered the subject of reducing railroad charges, it would
have to allow a margin to cover two millions more of necessary expenses per
annum. I only learned from such sources that your Representatives were

Destitute of Honor and Statesmanship,

'[Because, instead of trying to avert, they did advocate this imposition. How-
fever desirable for this State that the forty million people of the United States
[should bear the burden of this interest until the maturity of the bonds, instead
of this State only, the duty of your Representatives would not allow them to
so vote unless in accordance Avith a reasonable construction of the laws origi-
nating the railroad companies. By the original Railroad Act of 1862 it was
provided that the United States should issue its own bonds to a certain amount,
to run for thirty years, and meanwhile whatever transportation the companies
should do for the Gnvernnient the compensation should be applied on the in-
terest. In 1864 Congress provided that but one-half the transportation money
should be so applied. By plain legal intendment these statutes mean that
any interest money over and above one-half the transportation money shall be
paid by the government until the maturity of the bonds, as its aid towards the
road. It was a loan of its bonds to that extent; not an indorsement of the
bonds of the companies. If there is any doubt about the construction of these
laws, ought not your Representatives to give the benefit of that doubt to their
own State? Down to 1869 the Government had no doubt upon it, and held and
acted on the theory I have indicated ; when the Secretary of the Treasury
raised the question for the first time by withholding all transportation money
to apply on the interest. The matter being submitted to Congress, that body,
after debate in each house, construed the law as I construe it, and ordered the
Secretary to refund one-half of the money to the companies.

In the last Congress, when the Credit Mobilier excitement bad carried
nearly every one off his feet and made it dangerous even to do right by railroad
companies, the matter was revived and the question was presented not merely
of the retention of costs of transportation done for the Government, but the
[enforcement of payment of all past interest and all that accrues. Under this
jfltate of the law and the facts, and the vital interest of the State in the ques-
tion it may well be left to those having regard to our domestic welfare what
iverdict should be passed on the attitude assumed by your Representatives in
the Lower House of Congress. Were it necessary I might add to this that by
I reference to a speech made by one of those Representatives in 1862, in Con-

gross, on the Pacific Railroad bill then pending, he showed by a table of figures'
the amount of interest that the General Government would be called upon to ,
pay annually under the bill, and treated it as a burden to be met by the |L
National Treasury until the maturity of the bonds, and not by the railroad;',
companies before that time. As this Representative was denounced- ten years.)!,
thereafter as corrupt for insisting upon the same construction of the law in the ,'
same place, this reference may be excused.

If the considerations I have presented upon this matter are not invalid, or 4
if the State desires so much to injure the railroad companj^ that it is willing to [..
bear the direct burden of $2,000,000. and indirectly §2,000,000 more annually,:1:
for this and the next generation, and sustain any consequent disaster to itSL.
business interests, I trust that its will may be clearly expressed. On the other:.:,
hand, if these considerations have weight, it may be hoped that the action theyL
controlled will, in fairness, be ascribed to another motive than mere favoritism]'-,
to the railroad companies. For myself, even the expressed will of the StateL
would hardly induce me to consent that this great burden should fall upon this I ,
people. I had rather resist it, and wait for hotter times and cooler judgment!"
for vindication. In the face of the present storm I dare say this, and shall act],.
on it.

One other consideration in this connection. The other States, and not
California, are the ones to complain, if anybody, of a construction that makes;
the annual interest a National rather than a State charge^ We have here but:
one eightieth of the population, and two and three fifths per cent, of thejoi
property of the United States, and therefore pay but that proportion of tbejre>
yearly interest, getting back much more than the amount we pay in State andjcar
county taxes, on railroad property; while other States get no such proceeds!.^
from taxation, and we have all the local benefits of the road. Reverse the ruleijio1
and we pay it all. I know that this frank statement, the necessity for which a-
I regret, may excite attention in the other States, and increase the disposition m
to force this payment upon us. Yet all the States get the benefit of reduced it
cost of transportation of mails and Government troops and supplies — this re-{
duetion exceeding, by $2,000,000 annually, the whole amount of yearly interest, m
with security against costly Indian wars, and the benefit of tranquility in the::::
center of the continent. The average annual amount paid by the Government ;:
before the construction of the railroad for transportation of mails, troops and ,:
supplies, was $6,000,000. The whole interest charge is less than $4,000,000. 1
The cost of one expedition against the Mormons, before the railroad was me;
built, was greater than five years' interest on all the Pacific Railroad bonds. In is:
case of a foreign war, the benefit to the nation of the Pacific Railroad, in:
facilitating the defense and preservation of its Pacific possessions, will be j
incalculable.

In this-view it is equitable that the entire nation, and not this State alone, s.
should bear this load until the development of the interior, the creation of new ;T_
States along the line of the road, and the increase of business consequent \v
thereon, enable the Pacific roads to carry out the original intention of Con-
gress and discharge their obligations " at maturity." B|

Unwisdom. •

In the same spirit as that which seeks to add $4,000,000 to the annual ex f-
pense of running the Pacific Railroad are the efforts made to stimulate the
highest taxation of railroad pi*operty ; to injure the credit of the company bj
parading its debts and insisting on its insolvency, while inconsistently arraign ;
ing it for exacting too great profits from its business; denying necessary facili i
ties for transacting business, and making enmity to it a political test. It maj :'■'■

)e denied that this is malicious; but if railroading should be cheapened it is, at
east, unwise. If it is desirable that more railroads be built in this State it is
mwise. We have one mile of railroad to two hundred and four square miles
>f territory. New York has a mile of railroad to less than twelve square
niles; Pennsylvania, to less than ten; Ohio, to less than twelve; Massachu-
etts.to less than six. Even Missouri has a mile of railroad to thirty-two square
niles — over six times as much as California, in proportion to its area. Capital
,o build roads must in the future, as in the past, come from abroad. It will not
some if capital so invested is made the spirit of popular passion. The counties
>we it to themselves to reasonably tax all property within their boi'ders; prop-
erty acquired for railroad purposes should be paid for at reasonable rates, and
, fair protection to all industrial interests is the duty of legislators. But if
5,000 is charged to the railroad company for the use of a wharf in San Fran-
hsco, that cannot be made to yield an income of $700 in any other way, merely
;o make it expensive for the company to do business, passengers and freight
anded on that wharf must pay the impost. If the utterance of such opinions
is these is unpopular, it is because an artificial excitement and the suppression
)f truths have tended to mislead the public judgment.

Poor against Rich.

There is nothing new in attempts to decry the rich and excite the enmity
)f the poor against them. Assaults against capital have often been the
resource of politicians to advance personal aims. A raid against associated
capital is a raid against industry and enterprise. By associated capital the
a;reat businegs interests of the world are conducted, and employment is given
bo busy'millions. This Daniel Webster understood, and he shows through the
aaists of the past towering sublimely above the demagogues who would array
one class of society against another, as he utters the sentiments I shall quote
on the floor of the Senate :

" Sir, I see in those vehicles which cany to the people sentiments from high
places, plain declarations that the present controversy is but a strife between
one part of the community and another. I hear it boasted as the unfailing
security, the solid ground, never to be shaken, on which recent measures rest.
that the poor naturally hate the rich. I know that under the cover of the roofs of
the Capitol, within the last twenty-four hours, among men sent here to devise
means for the public safety and public good, it has been vaunted forth, as a
matter of boast and triumph, that one cause existed powerful enough to support
everything, and to defend everything, and that was the natural hatred of the poor
against tlie rich.

"Sir, I pronounce the author of such sentiments to be guilty of attempting
a detestable fraud on the community; a double fraud; a fraud which is to cheat
men out of their property and out of the earnings of their labor, by first cheat-
ing them out of their understandings."

Mr. Webster proceeded, with magnificent scorn, to denounce the knavery
of such pretended friends of the people, and to express his incredulity that the
people could be "deluded, cajoled and driven about in herds," by "tricks so
stale, so threadbare, so often practiced, so much worn out on serfs- and slaves."
He exclaimed :

" ' The natural hatred of the poor against the rich !' ' The danger of a
moneyed aristocracy !' ' A power as great as that resisted by the Bevolution !'
' A call to a new declaration of independence !' Sir, I admonish the people
against the object of outcries like these. I admonish every industrious laborer
in the country to be on his guard against such delusions. I tell him the attempt
is to play off his passions against his interests, and to prevail on him, in the

name of liberty, to destroy the fruits of liberty ; in the name of his own inde-
pendence, to destroy that independence, and make him a beggar and a slave.
Has he a dollar, he is advised to do that which will destroy half its value. Has
he hands to labor — let him rather fold them and sit still than be pushed on by
fraud and artifice to support measures which will render his labor useless andji
hopeless."

Thus spoke the great statesman on the question of the removal of the de-
posits. His words are as instinct with truth and power now as then, and as
applicable to passing events in 1873 as in 1838.

I trust the day will come when neither enmity nor friendship to railways
will be a test in politics; when, instead of poisonous agencies of disintegration
between the farmers, and merchants, and mechanics, and transportation com-i
panies, there will be a mutual spirit of fairness and accommodation. The
interests of labor and capital, of production and transportation, are interlaced,
and all prosper at the same time, and only in the same degree.

Note. — The table referred to in the foregoing is given below. I have not
the means at my disposal to verify its accuracy, but from the high character of
the magazine publishing it, presume it is correct.

Central Pacific Bailboad of Caijfobnia.

illinoi8 centeal
Eailboad.

0
■

Between San Francisco and

cts.
6
12
12
15
15
16
16
17
38
18
26
30
30

70
30
31
33
35
39
44
48
53

"S3

see
■ D

cts.

8
13
13
H
14
15
16
16
24
28
28
38
54
28
29
30
32
36
41
45
50

50 £

cts.

8
U
11
12
12 1
13
14
14
22
26
2>3
36
50
26
27
2S
29
31
31
37
40

so
■a »

So
wB
o»

°2
3s I?

cts.
14.00
21.00
2S.00
36.00
36.00
38.60
39 20
41.50
43.50
47.40
49.50
51.00
52.00
56.00
60.00
50.00
50 00
•50 50
51.00
51.00
52.00
52 50
53.00

zr.

i
1

c
S

3"
O

as go
• to

cts.
17.00
23.00
35.00
43.00
4i.00
48 30
48.90
51.50
53.50
57.20
59.50
61.OO
62.00
66.00
70.00
60.00
60.00
60.50

61 00
61.00

62 00
62 50
63.00

7
16

cts.
12.00
18.00
25.00
29.00

4fl

29.00

82
62

"HM

31.60
32.20
34.10

35.30

110
fSfi

37.50
39.50

180

41.00

199

42.00

(tfVi

46.00

275

Tlocljlin

50.00
40.00

165

40.00

40 50

171

41.00

T7fi

41 00

IS?

42.00

isq

N' w Eng Mill

42.50

194

43.00

14-

SPEEOH

SENATOK COLE,

PENDING RAILROAD QUESTIONS,

DELIVEEED AT

PLATT'S HALL, SAN FEANCISCO,

Monday Evening, September 23d, 1872.

SAN FKANCISCO

1872.

CAi-lFORNJA STATE LIBRARY

CORRESPON DENCE.

Hon. Cornelius Cole :

Deab Sm — In the midst of the doubt and uncertainty now existing in the minds of our people, and knowing
your devotion to the best interests of the city and State, we invite you to address the people at an early day, giving
your views on the Railway question.

Wellman, Peck & Co., L. & E. Wertheimer, Bandmann, Nielsen & Co., Haste & Kirk, Treadwell & Co., Van
Winkle & Davenport, Baker & Hamilton, Marcus C. Hawley & Co., Ross, Dempster & Co., Brittan, Holbrook & Co.,
H. Oppenhimer, H. Brickwedel & Co., Geo. H. Sanderson, Irvine, Harker & Co., Coghill, Lyons & Co., J. C. Johnson
& Co., Fleishman, Gichel & Co., Geo. F. Bragg & Co., C. L. Taylor & Co., J. D. Arthur & Son, Meeker, James &
Co., Moore & Co., Wooster & Shattuck, W. W. Dodge, Boot & Bailey, A. C. Dietz & Co., J. C. Wilmerding, Pilsbury,
Webb & Co., Rockwell, f oye & Co., Geo. C. Johnson & Co., and many others.

San Francisco, September 18, 1872.

Gentlemen — Replying to your polite invitation to give my views on pending railroad questions, I will do
so publicly as soon as a suitable place can be obtained, of which notice wiB be given.

Very respectfully, your obedient ssivant,

C. COLE.
To Wellman, Peck & Co., L. & E. Wertheimeb, Haste & Kibe, and others.
San Francisco, September, 19, 1872.

RAILROADS

Fellow Citizens :

In recognition of the right of the people
to the views of their representative upon
questions of public concern, I appear before
you to-night to discuss ia my imperfect way,
the subject of railroads as connected with
the interests of this community. There is
more propriety in this from the fact that in
the future as in the past, the subject of rail-
roads may come before me for action, and
that action may involve in a large degree
the welfare of those whose servant for the
time being I am. Since receiving the in-
vitation to address you, I have hardly had
time to give that consideration to the sub-
ject which its importance demands, or to
clothe my opinions in such terse and be-
coming language as the intelligence and
good taste of a San Francisco audience al-
ways requires. While I may say nothing
in ill-temper, I shall endeavor not to fall
short of the performance of duty by failing
to express my views in a plain, blunt man-
ner. Nor shall I omit any topic which I
deem worthy of attention, provided your
patience and my strength hold out.

MULTIPLICITY OF EAILEOADS.

The inspection of a railroad map of the
United States shows the country netted all
over with railroads. Particularly is this the
case in the Northern Atlantic States. A
more careful inquiry discloses the fact that
63,000 miles of road are now completed and
in actual use. If they were stretched across
the continent they would make twenty-five
entire railroads from ocean to ocean, and
give us a Pacific Railway every fifty miles
from the British possessions quite to the
frontier of Mexico. Or, if running north
and south, they would span the country
fifty times or every fifty miles from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. There is a mile of
railroad to every one hundred voters, and if
these roads, as is alleged, have cost §40,000
a mile, there is an investment in such prop-
erty equal to §400 to every man, or §60 to
every man, woman and child in the land.

These roads have all been constructed and
many of them rebuilt several times within
the past forty years. I can myself remem-
ber the beginning of railroads in the United
States, but the end no man can see. For
the last ten years they have increased much
more rapidly, in proportion, than the popu-
lation, and this will probably continue for
many years to come, and until all parts of
the country are abundantly accommodated
with the iron rail. Nothing can limit their
construction but the supply of material and
capital, and these are without limit. Ties
can be grown, should necessity require it,
and the mountains of iron, alreadj' discov-
ei-ed, are absolutely inexhaustible. The
question as to where railways shall be per-
manently established is merely a question
of time. Where they are not wanted they
will not be built, or if built, will not be long
maintained ; and where they are wanted,
their construction is certain, notwithstand-
ing arguments to the contrary, which may
be drawn from slight delays and unimpor-
tant variations. Railroads, as a general
rule, conform to the requirements of busi-
ness ; and it has rarely happened that the
persons having their construction in charge,
have had the temerity to disregard such
demands.

THE CENTRAL PACIFIC EAILBOAD COMPANY

Of California have, in some instances, ig-
nored the demands of population and busi-
ness, and are even now threatening to do
so ; but in this policy they stand alone, so
far as I know, among all the railroad com-
panies of the United States. But in other
respects, likewise, they stand alone among
the railroad companies. They stand alone
in this, that their roads have been built ex-
clusively with the public money. From
this latter circumstance it might be supposed
they would be the very last to disregard the
wishes of the public, but the melancholy
fact is brought home vividly to the attention
of the people of this city from time to time
in the form of further and further demands

for lands and money and bonds, and citizens
here and elsewhere are threatened with one
abnormal proposition and another to their
injury if they withhold the demanded
tribute.

THE BUCCANEERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST.

The early Spanish settlements along the
coast of the Pacific were sometimes visited
by buccaneers, who would anchor before a
town and demand as the price of immunity,
contributions of money and supplies. If the
innocent people from whom such demand
was made, had previously contributed
largely to provide the buccaneer with his
vessel and guns, in the belief that the3r
would be used for protection instead of rob-
bery, the parallel between that case and
the present demand of the Railroad Com-
pany would be complete. Instead of seek-
ing, as in duty and in honor bound, to ac-
commodate the business of San Francisco,
from which they have already drawn
largely, very largely, they threaten that
business with injury, if not with destruc-
tion, should it refuse a still further most
extortionate demand. In this way they are
turning against the city the very guns
which were furnished them for its protec-
tion. They have dropjDed anchor in front
of this town, and have levied tribute upon
the people to the extent of two and a half, if
not twelve and a half, millions in money,
besides princely estates in lands. All this
is demanded as a consideration for doing
just what they are morally, legally and
honorably bound to do already. The Cen-
tral Pacific Railroad Company have hitherto
received enormous donations, not only
from this city, but from the State and Fed-
eral Government, with the clear under-
standing on the part of everybody, that San
Francisco would be made the western ter-
minus of the Pacific Railroad. That they
are abundantly able of themselves to carry
out their obligation in this regard, without
further assistance, is not open to question;
and the effrontry of this last demand, in ad-
dition to the unbounded terminal privileges
in Mission Bay, will be made more clearly
to appear by an allusion to the public laws
bearing upon the subject.

ENORMOUS DONATIONS BY GOVERNMENT.

The Central and Western Pacific Rail-
road Companies, now one and the same
concern, have received from the United
States Government, in interest bearing
bonds, the sum of $27,855,680, and they
were moreover authorized to issue their
own first mortgage bonds to take prece-
dence of the Government bonds, as a secu-
rity— upon the road to an equal extent; so

that they have actually received aid from
the United States Government in the form
of bonds and securities, to the enormous
amount of $55,711,360; besides which, the
Government has paid interest, for them
amounting to $6,164,720 49. How much
the Central Company has up to date real-
ized out of the 15,000,000 acres, more or less,
of lands donated to them by the General
Government, the books of the real estate
department of that huge concern alone will
show; but counting the sales and assets to-
gether, and the amount in value cannot be
less than $10,000,000. Numerous towns
and cities have been laid out by the Com-
pany along their lines, and these must all
be counted under this head, making the
sum in all probability far in excess Of
$10,000,000.

IMMENSE REVENUE OF THE ROAD.

In estimating the ability of this public
institution to reach the city by erecting a
bridge across the bay, it would be well if
the data were at hand to institute inquiry as
to the amount of earnings, over and above
expenses, that have accrued to the lucky
managers during these nine years of its op-
erations. That they have run far up into
the millions has been shown by the adver-
tisements of their agents, put forth while
yet their bonds were seeking a market. If
the statements of such are anywhere near
correct, the earnings of the Company's
roads for but a single month, would be am-
ply sufficient to make an excellent bridge
across the bay at Ravens wood, or even fur-
ther north.

In view of all the circumstances, I can
hardly believe this two and a half mil-
lion proposition emanated from the broad-
minded men who have control of the
Central Pacific Railroad's affairs. It has
much more the appearance of an emanation
from the brain of certain political retainers,
who in all probability have invented this
expedient for making a million or two out
of the people, and whom the railroad com-
pany can illy afford to offend by refusing.

THEY WILL TERMINATE IN MISSION BAY.

Certain, it is, that the railroad company
are not in want of the means for making
any connection they may desire with this
city. And it is equally certain that they
intend by bridging the Bay, to make their
depots here whether the people vote the
two and a half millions or not. If any one
doubts this proposition let him pay a visit
to Mission Bay, and ask himself if the vast
improvements of the magnificent property
of the Company in that neighborhood now
going on can have any other object.

SPOILS SHARED WITH CORRUPT POLITICIANS.

But there is a gang of politicians in this
State, with headquarters in this city, when
the Legislature is not in session, whose
study by day and dreams by night are
bent upon schemes to defraud and cheat the
people. These fellows have been very use-
ful to the Railroad companies in times past,
and this happy opportunity for extorting a
large sum out of San Francisco, the Rail-
road Company, their masters or slaves, I
hardly know which they should be called,
dare not deny them. It is not to be dispu-
ted that the Railroad Company is to share
in the spoils, but that they stand in need of
the money, or will change their purpose as
to terminus, if it is withheld, or will obtain
the lion's share, if voted, is most emphati-
cally denied. I say nothing about the par-
ticipation of the press in the matter. Thank
God a portion of the press is incorruptible.
But there is a ring of politicians so small
that they can easily be numbered on the
fingers of one's hand, who no doubt will be
largely benefited should the scheme suc-
ceed. I need not name these gently, for
they are already in the reluctant minds of
my hearers. Their names are as familiar to
this community as are the names of Tweed
and Sweeney in Xew York, and possess a
similar odor. Their chief occupation is pol-
itics. They see to it in the first place that
the Legislature is made up in part of selec-
tions by themselves, and then in the lobby
they give directions to their creatures. It
is mainly through their instrumentality
that a brood of subsidy measures is hatched
at each session, and pushed before the Leg-
islature. It cannot be forgotten that both
political parties, by their Conventions last
year, in their platforms, and in the canvass
everywhere, endeavored to head off these
subsidy cormorants, but it seems to have
been a failure, for at the very next session of
the Legislature they were as active as ever,
and laws were passed looking to the suc-
cess of their schemes. They have so far
succeeded in blinding the people to these
solemn pledges, that they dare now to enter
upon the subsidy business deeper than ever
before.

PRIVATE ENTERPRISE AND SUBSIDY.

Most of the railroads in the United States
—yes, nearly all_of them — have been built
by private capital, as legitimate business
enterprises, but not so in California. If a
single railroad has been constructed in this
Stale upon that principle I do not know
where it is. Following the rash example
of the Federal Government, set in regard
to the Pacific Railway, it has become cus-
tomary, not only to grant right of way and

local privileges, but for the State, the coun-
ties and towns, to make large concessions
of money or bonds.

EXHIBIT OP CALIFORNIA SUBSIDIES.

The extent to which this has been carried
in California is something marvelous, and
the bare statement of it, I trust, will be suf-
ficient to induce the people to stop and
think before going further. Ever since
1864 the State has been paying to the Rail-
road Company, interest, in gold coin, at
seven per cent., on $1,500,000; and must
continue to pay this 8105,000 a year, in
gold, until 1884 at least. At the end of the
contract this will have amounted, without
compounding, to the snug little sum of
§2,100,000; but, compounded, to the sum of
§5,804,512. This, of itself, is a direct tax
upon the people and business of San Fran-
cisco of at least §45,000 a year — her share of
this annual gift from the Commonwealth of
California to the thrifty firm known as the
Central Pacific Railroad Company. Be-
sides the million and a half thus guaran-
teed by the State, other millions have been
donated directly by the people of the differ-
ent cities and counties. I find that about
forty special laws have been passed by our
Legislature, authorizing gifts of money and
bonds to railroad companies, to say noth-
ing about other acts granting lands and
privileges of one sort and another , and the
Five per cent, law, so-called, of the session
of 1869. The amounts authorized to be giv-
en by the several counties and cities under
these forty odd Acts, range from §50,000
up to a million dollars each; and a partial
list of them may be interesting for refer-
ence at the present time.

PARTIAL LIST OF THE SUBSIDIES.

Yuba county, §200,000. Statutes 1S57,
page 296.

Sutter county, §50,000. Statutes 1859,
page 247.

Solano county, §200,000. Statutes 1859,'
page 266.

Yolo county, §50,000. Statutes 1859, page
270.

San Mateo county, §100,000. Statutes
1S60, page 230.

San Francisco county, §600,000. Statutes
1860, page 233.

Santa Clara county, §200,000. Statutes

1860, page 261.

Placer county, §100,000. Statutes 1860,
page 344.

Santa Clara county, §200,000. Statutes

1861, page 128.

San Mateo county, §100,000. Statutes
1861, page 134.

San Francisco county, §300,000. Statutes
1861, page 198.

Statutes 1863,
Statutes 1863,

Stat-

Statutes 1863,
Statutes 1863,
Statutes

Los Angeles city, $50,000. Statutes 1861,
page 457.

Los Angeles county, $100,000. Statutes
1861, page 465.

San Joaquin county, $250,000. Statutes
1863, page 80.

Placerville city, $100,000. Statutes 1863,
page 86.

San Joaquin county, $100,000. Statutes
1863, page 102.

El Dorado county, $200,000. Statutes
1863, page 122.

Placer county, $250,000. Statutes 1863,
page 145.

Santa Clara county, $150,000. Statutes
1863, page 276.

Stanislaus county, $25,000
page 310. •
— Alameda county, $220,000.
page 365.

San Francisco county, $1,000,000
utes 1863, page 380.

Sacramento county, $300,000. Statutes
1863, page 447.

Calaveras county, $50,000.
page 673.

Tuolumne county, $50,000
page 679.

El Dorado county, $100,000
1863-4, page 378.

Calaveras county, $50,000. Statutes 1865-
6, page 759.

Napa county, $70,000. Statutes 1865-6,
page 810.

Stanislaus county, $25,000. Statutes 1865-
6, page 543.

Yuba county, $65,000.
page 75 and 373.

Yolo county, $100,000
page 263.

Los Angeles county, $150,000.
1867-8, page 14.

Los Angeles city, $75,000
8, page 20.

Plumas county, $230,000.
page 630.

Sutter county, $50,000
page 155.

. San Joaquin county, $200,000. Statutes
1869-70, page 532.

Stockton city, $300,000. Statutes 1869-70,
page 551.

San Francisco, $1,000,000. Statutes 1869-
70, page 707.

Total, $6,360,000. It is not exactly known
how much assistance has been actually ren-
dered in pursuance of these statutes, but it
amounts to a good number of millions.

BOND ISSUES.

In the following cases bonds are known
to have been issued : Yuba county,
$265,000 ; Solano county, $200,000 ; San
Mateo county, $100,000 ; San FranGisco

Statutes 1865-6,

Statutes 1867-8,

Statutes

Statutes 1867-

Statutes 1867-8,

county, $950,000 ; Santa Clara county,
$350,000; Auburn (town), $50,000; Los An-
geles county, $150,000; San Joaquin county,
$250,000; Placerville (city), $100,000; El
Dorado county, $300,000 ; Placer county,
$250,000; Sacramento county, $300,000. To-
tal, $3,265,000.

OTHER MUNIFICENT DONATIONS AND
FRANCHISES.

In addition to all these enumerated gifts
and guarantees of money and bonds and
lands from the Federal Government, the
State and several cities and counties have
granted bonds and franchises of inestimable
value; as at Vallejo, at Sacramento, at Marys-'
ville, at San Jose, at Stockton, and other
places, besides the enormous donations of
submerged and other lands in and adjoining
Oakland and San Francisco, comprising a
thousand or two acres in the former city,
and in the latter, including the right of way
to her southern border, literally hundreds
of acres more, prospectively and in the im-
mediate future, worth millions upon mil-
lions of dollars. Such a record of munifi-
cent donations to railroads can be found in
no other State in the Union, nor, indeed,
anything at all comparable to it. Califor-
nia, in this particular, stands entirely alone;
peerless in her generosit3r.

AUDACITY OF

THE CALIFORNIA
LOBBY.

RAILROAD

New York furnished the means for build-
ing tlie Erie canal, and when it was finished
she owned it. It is a source of revenue to
the Empire State to this day; but the people
of California, who have supplied the means
to build her railroads, own no share in any
of them. Their rights are wholly ignored.
Nay, worse; the very strength they have so
generouslj7 conferred upon railroads is used
for purposes of oppression. Not so much
in the extortionate freights and fares that
are exacted by these beneficiaries, as by the
operations of the ever-present railroad lobby
that infest alike city governments and the
halls of legislation, corrupting the very
fountains of law. The unbridled audacity .
of the railroad lobby of this State is a pecu-
liar feature of our society. The boldness of
their schemes is appalling. Highway rob-
bery is modesty itself in comparison. A
scheme involving millions was once checked
by executive firmness, when forthwith that
lobby set to work to obtain possession of the
executive as well as the legislative depart-
ments of the government, and well nigh
succeeded in their efforts.

THE PEOPLE EQUAL TO ANY EMERGENCY^

They were only checked by the determined""

purpose of the people, which, after all,
is equal to any emergency when aroused.
The projection of railroads has afforded such
excellent opportunities, such available pre-
texts for greedy schemes to filch money
from the people that the construction of rail-
roads has never been entered upon in Cali-
fornia as a legitimate business enterprise,
involving the proper investment of capital,
as in other parts of the world. It has been
simply a system of scheming, to compel
the public to furnish fortunes to impecu-
neous lobbyists. That some railroads have
been the result of this scheming is true, but
unfortunately they have fallen under the
powerful management of the Central Pacific
Ring. The $70, 000, 000 of assistance received
by that company at the hands of the general
Government alone, has completely over-
shadowed all other railroad enterprises, and,
like Aaron's rod, it has swallowed them all
up.

PROPOSITIONS OF COL. SCOTT CONTRASTED.

The difference in the notions of the rail-
road men of California from those of the
Atlantic side was finely illustrated the other
day by the surprise with which Colonel
Thos. Scott overwhelmed the people of San
l)iego. With the utmost consternation, they
were awaiting, according to custom, his de-
mand for tribute, as a condition of establish-
ing his business among them, when, to their
utter astonishment, he only asked facilities
for entering and making his terminus in
their young and nourishing city. Colonel
Scott is accustomed to building railroads
after the eastern style — that is, by proper
investment of private capital ; and though
he fully intends to connect the city of San
Francisco with his line of i?oad, I have not
heard that he mentioned, or even thought of,
subsidy in connection therewith during his
late visit to this coast. He knows full well
that there is capital enough in Europe, if
not in America, to carry out his plans with-
out draining and crippling every communi-
ty through which his road is to pass, and
without appalling the people with the ex-
travagance of his demands and boldness of
his threats. Let the people hope and pray
that Colonel Scott may never fall into the
hands of the California railroad lobby ; but
it is clear, nevertheless, that he will need
the negative co-operation of the good people
of this coast to enable him to keep free from
their toils and trammels.

AN OPEN FIELD AND FAIR COMPETITION.

I believe all the co-operation he will ask
is, that San-Franciscans and others shall not,
by their votes, assist railway sharps to put
obstacles in his way. If I know the man,

all he desires is an open field and fair com-
petition. The people at least should accord
him that much, and by no means embarrass
his movements by aiding a company that
already controls nearly every line of com-
munication in the State. There is not much
likelihood of the people sustaining other
propositions for subsidy, and I only have
apprehensions about the success of the two
and a half million job from the fact that it
is in the hands of the regular railroad ring,
whose schemes have so often heretofore been
carried to a successful issue by corrupt ap-
pliances. When I observe their influence
upon committees and Councils and Boards,
and the facility with which they are able to
delude those sentinels upon the watch-tower
of the people — the newspapers of the land —
I cannot but conclude that danger ap-
proaches.

MISTAKE OF REAL ESTATE OWNERS.

For some strange and unaccountable rea-
son, our real estate dealers have joined in a
representation that the value of lands in
San Francisco will be greatly increased by
this further large gift to the Central Pacific
Railroad Company, and this statement is
made in the face of the fact that the Com-
pany are not onby exhibiting their indepen-
dence of further aid from any quarter, but
are at the same time showing their faith in
the city by investing largely, and at good
prices, in its real estate. It is hard to find
a warrant for the conclusion to which these
land men of San Francisco have arrived.
The operations of the Railroad Company
may have precipitated or hastened a crisis
in the real estate market of the city, and
those same operations may possibly have
had a similar effect upon the value of stocks;
but I should sooner expect an improvement
in the price of the latter than in the former,
by the assumption of a lasting indebtedness
of two and a half additional millions, which
must constitute a burden upon this same
real estate.

PROMISES AND DISAPPOINTMENT.

A person afflicted with a little temporary
illness sometimes resorts to medicine in
hopes of relief, and thereby only confirms
his ailment. San Francisco ought not to be
guilty of such a folly. She is not afflicted
with any chronic disease, she is young and
vigorous, and, as I believe, yet able to cope
with any railroad ring that may threaten
her prosperity. Preserve her strength, her
vigor, her independence. Suffer her not to
be chained to the chariot of any man or set
of men. You have before you already ex-
amples enough to illustrate the danger of
listening to the blandishments of railroad

cormorants. El Dorado, Yuba, Sacramento,
San Joaquin and other counties have con-
tributed largely to railroad enterprises, and
some of them are to-day without credit.
They were promised great advantages in
every case, and were as hopeful when voting
their aid as the aforesaid real estate authori-
ties can possibly be ; but disappointment is
as likely to come to San Francisco as to
others.

INTENTION OF THE CENTRAL COMPANY TO
MAKE THEIR TERMINUS IN MISSION BAT.

Having shown, I believe, that the Cen-
tral Pacific Railroad Company are in no
need whatever of assistance from any source
to enable them to reach San Francisco by
continuous rail, and to establish their depot
at Mission Bay, it remains to be demonstra-
ted, that such is their purpose. In the city
newspapers of the 24th and 25th of July last
can be read the following:

"A meeting of tlw Executive Committee of the
One Hundred Committee was held in the rooms of
the Chamber of Commerce, at two o'clock this af-
ternoon.

Mr. Wheeler stated to the Committee the subject
matter of a conversation had informally with Mr.
Stanford on the day previous, to wit : with refer-
ence to the relative advantages of a railroad from
Bantas, on the San Joaquin, direct to Mission Bay,
via Livermore Pass, Niles Station, Bavenswood
Bridge and the shore line east of the San Bruno
Mountains, and a road from Bantas, via the Straits
of Carquinez, Oakland and the ferry now in opera-
tion, to Mission Bay. Mr. Stanford" stated that the
former route was not only feasible and practicable,
but the most desirable of the two ; that the advan-
tages of coming to San Francisco by a contin-
uous rail more than counterbalances any such
slight disadvantages of grade as that of Livermore
Pass, which is 52 feet to the mile, and that the dis-
tance by such route to Mission Bay would be the
same as' from Bantas, via the Straits of Carquinez,
to the town of Oakland — the latter route to San
Francisco being longer than the former by just the
length of the ferry; and that now in going from
San Francisco via the ferry and the pier at Oakland,
one hour was consumed" in reaching Simpson's
Station, near Alameda; while in the same space of
time a train could leave Mission Bay and reach
Niles, twenty miles beyond Simpson's, and thirty-
eight miles from San Francisco, by the land
route."

NATURAL AND FEASIBLE ROUTE.

The grade through Livermore Pass can
be considerably reduced, and then " the ad-
vantages of coming to San Francisco by a
continuous rail " will be proportionately in-
creased; and by crossing the bay at Ravens-
wood, or further north, no more of a de-
tour from a direct line is made in arriving
at San Francisco than if the same point were
attained via the Oakland ferry. The origi-
nal purpose in connection with the Pacific
Railroad acts, was to reach San Francisco

by precisely this route across the head of
the bay. Upon this I speak advisedly, for
the matter was freely discussed as far back
as 1864, in the Committee on the Pacific
Railroads, of the House of Representatives,
of which I was then a member, and by rail-
road men elsewhere and everywhere. It is
the most natural and feasible route to San
Francisco, which is the objective point, for
without such cut-off the route by rail
would be via San Jose and over existing
roads to this city.

STOPPING SHORT OF SAN FRANCISCO OF MOD-
EBN ORIGIN.

I may add here that the idea of stopping
short of the great commercial emporium of
the Eastern Pacific with the Pacific Rail-
road, is one of comparatively modern ori-
gin. It did not exist at the time Congress
was lending its aid to the great work; and
the discussion of other points as a terminus,
from time to time, it must be confessed,
presents to the impartial mind some of the
elements of a jobbing operation, and at the
same time is wanting in some of the ele-
ments of sincerity. It is not pretended
that all the business of that vast thorough-
fare will concentrate in any one city, but
San Francisco is as certain to have all that
properly belongs to her, as that she shows
a disposition to vindicate her rights. The
Central Pacific Railroad firm know too well
that they cannot disregard with impunity
the proper requirements of such a commu-
nity as this, and hence they appear to be
exercising all needful diligence in firmly
establishing themselves upon their magnifi-
cent property at Mission Bay. They have
secured by gift or otherwise, a hundred
acres, more or less, of most valuable
ground for terminal purposes there; besides,
about two hundred acres in a broad right of
way, along the city front, quite to its south-
ern border; and all this they are now
improving, with the evident purpose of
carrying out the original intention which,
of course, is in harmony with the business
interests of this commercial metropolis.
Work upon the bridge itself is probably
only postponed in order that a decision
may first be had on the subsidy question.

OPPOSED TO ALL PROPOSED SUBSIDIES.

It may well be inferred that I am opposed
to the whole brood of absolute subsidies, or
gifts now urged upon the people of San
Francisco. They are the mere conception
of political intriguers ; they are the spawn
of lobby cupidity, and fruitful agencies for
corrupting public morals. Cast them all
aside, and legitimate railroad enterprise
will soon be tapping at your window. If

the large experience we have already had
in the subsidy business had resulted more
advantageously to the public I might think
otherwise of them, but the record of insol-
vent farmers, through whose abundant
wheat-fields railroads are now running; the
dangers that are threatened to communities
that hesitate to comply with the exactions
of railroad magnates, and the calamities
that are actually visited upon recusant
towns and villages, admonish us that we
may already have gone too far in adding to
the strength of overgrown monopolies.

THE PEOPLE'S EIGHTS DISREGARDED.

A sense of justice and good morals would
teach that where the public money has
been added to private means in the con-
struction of a railroad for the people's
convenience, its managers ought to be
content with an income therefrom sufficient
to keep such road in good order, in addition
to paying them a fair interest upon their
own share of the investment. Everything
beyond this is a clear encroachment upon
the rights of the public, whose means are
in the enterprise. But if I am properly in
formed, the rates of freight and fare upon
the railroads of California are imposed
without the slightest reference to the inter-
est of those whose money or credit for most
part built them, and only in reference to
the ability of the public to endure the bur-
dens. The cupidity of the recipient mana-
gers, and not at all the wishes of the exclud-
ed owners, governs the charges upon these
thoroughfares.

THE PRESENT SUBSIDY PROPOSITION.

I hardly know in what light this present
subsidy proposition ought to be viewed,
whether more as a lobby operation, or as
one to still further gorge an exceedingly
corpulent firm; or to further strengthen
those whose oppressions are already almost
unendurable, or to add one more to the many
favors conferred upon the Central Pacific
Railroad Company; or whether it is not a
plain, simple proposition to grind the face
of the poor people of San Francisco county,
in order that the rich may be made richer.
Some may find authority for voting it in the
Scripture, which declares that " To him
that hath shall be given, and from him that
hath not shall be taken away, even that
which he hath." Whatever else may be said
about it, viewed in the light of a magnificent
superfluity, of a grand lobby scheme, or of
a wholly one-sided gift enterprise, it is not
to be mistaken.

THE GOAT ISLAND SCHEME.

So far as time permits, I will now con-

sider the Goat Island question. It is given
prominence just at present, by being made
the pretext for this demand for additional
bonds. The Railroad Company have
already, as I have shown, received immeas-
urable advantages from the patient people
of San Francisco, of which they are still in
the full fruition and enjoyment. These
advantages were conferred with the rightful
expectation of reciprocity, and they were
received by the railroad men without inti-
mation adverse to such an understanding.
Among the favors thus bestowed and thus
accepted is an annual interest of over
§100,000 regularly paid on railroad bonds
by the people of this city.

USED AS TRADING CAPITAL.

Nevertheless these companies have been
grasping frantically after Goat Island for
years past, but whether for useful purposes
or to be handled as a trading capital, no
one could exactly tell; but the latter pur-
pose is now being partially developed in
the proposition of the company or their
lobby agents to abandon their claim, to that
Island for the sum of §2,500,000. In
furtherance of this plan the people of San
Francisco are coolly told that their city is on
the wrong side of the bay, and that the
business of this port can be transacted on
Goat Island and the flats adjoining, and
that §2,500,000 is simply the price of
exemption from ruin. Some have wondered
that this discovery was not made sooner, or
if made, that it was not disclosed while the
Railroad Companies were the recipients of
former bounties at the hands of this people.
But the assurance embodied in this propo-
sition of the Railroad Company to trade off
what they have not; to barter to the city
what more properly belongs to the city, is
without example, andean only be accounted
for upon the hypothesis that corporations
are without consciences.

CONGRESS WILL NOT GRANT GOAT ISLAND.

Neither the Central Pacific firm nor any
other railroad company, has any interest
whatever in Goat Island, nor is it likely to
have. The island of Yerba Buena is a
military reservation, within the city, and
belongs to the Government of the United
States, and there is very little disposition to
abandon it, or to surrender up any part of
it for any other use whatsoever. A moment's
reflection would convince one that it is not
at all a matter of necessity to any railroad,
and hardly a matter of convenience; while
for the defence of the harbor and the pro-
tection of the city, it is indispensable. The
superabundant accommodations that rail-
roads can find everywhere about this

magnificent bay, without looking to that one
little spot, should satisfy the people that
private gain is at the bottom of the move-
ment, rather than public convenience.

AN ABSURD PROPOSITION.

I do not apprehend there will be any diffi-
culty in convincing the Senate of the United
States that Yerba Buena is more needed for
defensive than for speculative purposes, nor
can I believe that the people of San Fran-
cisco will be deluded by the shallow pre-
tense that the Central Pacific Railroad Com-
pany have aninterest in it worth $2,500,000,
or any other sum. The boldness of the
presumption of that Company, as exhibited
in their recent offer to the Board of Super-
visors of this city, is but a step from the
sublime — it is absolutely ridiculous. To give
up to the Railroad Company Yerba Buena
would be on the part of the United States
Government a most Quixotic movement
outstripping entirely every extravagance of
the far-famed Knight of La Mancha, who, it
will be remembered, once generously gave
an island to his faithful squire.

DEBATES IN CONGRESS ON THE GOAT ISLAND
QUESTION.

I am not forgetful that a bill to grant a
portion of it to the Central Pacific Railroad
passed the House of Representatives last
winter. Neither am I forgetful that the
proposition was advocated by the very per-
sons who, above all others, should have op-
posed it. But its passage through the House
of Representatives was only one step to-
ward giving it the force of law. Without
favorable action in the Senate, and the ap-
proval of the President, who, as a military
man, has a full appreciation of its worth to
the government, the claims of the Railroad
Company remained wholly invalid. To
force a favorable consideration of the sub-
ject in the Senate against my opposition,
particular pains were taken to prove that on
a former occasion I had favored the measure.

MISREPRESENTATIONS OF ITS ADVOCATES.

The chief advocate of the Coat Island
scheme in the present House of Represent-
atives indulged in the following statement
in the debate upon that question :

"So far at least as the two Senators of the day
(1868) . Mr. Conness, who supported the bill, and
Mr. Cole, were concerned, there was an entire
willingness ' that this company should have their
depot and place of trans-shipment upon the island
of Yerba Buena.' Nothing more was proposed in
the bill recently before the House. But in that de-
hate there cropped out a villainous scheme, in sup-
port of which there is now a ravenous lobby prowl-

ing about the Capitol to deliver over this island to
speculators. This is a big job, worthy of notice,
that it would seem only corrupt fingers coultf
handle. There is a scheme on foot, and it then ha4
its inception, to give Yerba Buena island to privaU
claimants, who had and have no more right to it
than I have, and this in disregard of any wants of
the Government for fortification purposes, and in
view of the further fact that the only use of the
island could be for fortifications or for a railroad
terminus."

THE FACTS OF THE CASE.

The willful misrepresentation here perpe-
trated by this railroad advocate will appear,
when I state that the bill under discussion
in 1868 was a very different bill from the
one that lately passed the House of Repre-
sentatives. The bill of 1868 related to the
Western Pacific Railroad Company, and not
to the Central Pacific. It proposed simply
to allow the former company to occupy so
much, and no more, of the island as the
General of the Army and the Secretary of
War should declare was not needed for mil-
itary uses. The strife at that time for a foot-
hold upon that coveted ground was between
a company known as the Terminal Railroad
Company and the Western Pacific Railroad
Company, it being understood all the while
that the Central Pacific were to make their
principal depot in the city of San Francisco.

NOT A TERMINAL QUESTION.

The railroad across the continent was not
then completed, and the subject of its ter.
minus upon the Pacific coast, had not then
been brought in question, as it has since-
The Central Pacific Railroad Company were
then asking favors of the people, and were
disposed to pay deference to their wishes.
They had not yet assumed the role of dic-
tator, nor had they reached the point of
regarding their convenience as paramount
to all other considerations.

The Western Pacific Railroad in asking
only for so much of the island as was not
needed for military purposes, was asking
for just no portion at all. The question
was to be left to the General of the Army
and the Secretary of War; and the War
Department had already declared, in at
least two reports to Congress, against sur-
rendering any portion of it whatever to
railroad occupation.

AGAINST SURRENDER OF THE ISLAND.

To make more certain that a similar
result would follow another application, I
moved to include the Chief of Engineers of
the Army among those whose judgment
was to be taken as to whether a railroad
should be permitted to approach the Island

or not. I also proposed a specific amend-
ment to prevent impediments to the ebb
and flow of tides, between the Island and
the Oakland shore. As a still further pre-
caution, I propossed that the rights of per-
sons in possession of the Island at the time
of the military occupation thereof, should
not be impaired.

PERVERSION OF FACTS.

In the face of this record, and the frequent
recognition of Senators in the debate of my
opposition to the measure, the author of
the speech quoted from has the' effrontery
to say that I was in favor of permitting the
Central Pacific Railroad Company to locate
their depot on the Island of Yerba Buena
rather than in San Francisco county. In
the very paragraph of my speech from
which he quotes appears a qualification in
the following language: " Provided it does
not interfere with the harbor and city of
San Francisco." This proviso had refer-
ence directly to the adverse report of the
War Department, and was alone enough to
have convinced a candid mind that I did
not favor the surrender of the island, or any
part of it, to the Western Pacific, nor to any
other railroad company. The mere intro-
duction of a bill, by request, at a subsequent
session, in order to bring the subject before
a Committee, does not at all conflict with
this statement.

Every one who desires it has a right to a
hearing before a Committee of Congress.
This privilege, which is the privilege of pe-
tition, has not been denied since the time of
John Quincy Adams, and the usual, if not
the only, way of bringing a matter before a
Committee, is by the presentation of a bill,
or memorial, in open session, and its refer-
ence to Committee by an order of the body.
That course is often pursued without bind-
ing the conscience or committing the mem-
ber to the support of the measure. Great
pains have been taken in this community
by little railroad politicians to show that I
once introduced a bill upon this subject, and
this is my only reference to the matter.
The reports from the War Department
strongly favored the retention of the whole
island for military purposes ; and it further
set forth that to connect the island with the
mainland by railroad structures would work
great injury to the harbor of San Francisco,
in which opinion I then, and have ever since,
concurred.

VILLAINOUS SCHEME.

The allusion in this speech quoted from
to a " villainous scheme," and to "a raven-
ous lobby, prowling about the Capitol to
turn over the island to speculators," gives

evidence of a most unaccountable obliquity
in the mind of its author, for it is a notorious
fact that the only lobby prowling about the
Capitol, or about the capital at all at that
time in reference to that matter, was the
lobby that was aiding him to turn over the
island to the Central Pacific Railroad
Company. Whether it was "a villainous
scheme," others can judge as well as my-
self. Some philosopher or poet has told us
that " suspicions always haunt the guilty
mind," and that will account for the lan-
guage used by this over-zealous railroad
advocate.

The influence of that powerful lobby, how-
ever, was unavailing to convert the island
of Yerba Buena into private property ; and
it is likely to remain what Providence de-
signed it should be, the military key to the
harbor of San Francisco, and an everpresent,
everlasting protection to the Government
against foes from within and without. Its
location at the entrance of the harbor, and
at the same time, in front of the city, gives
it certain advantages over all other places
for fortification, and its efficiency for such
purpose depends upon its exclusive use.
To surrender a portion of it would be equiv-
alent to surrendering the whole, for like
Gouverneur's Island, or Alcatraz and othre
islands that might be mentioned, its strength
and efficiency depends upon its undivided
occupation by military force.

PERSONAL PROPERTY.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company is
overstocked with real estate already. What
with their possessions in "Vallejo, Sacra-
mento, Oakland and in Mission Bay,
including as I suppose even the market
places and produce exchange of the city,
with China and Central Basins thrown in,
and other magnificent gifts too numerous to
mention, it would seem as if they might
be content, without grasping after this,
almost the only property left to the Govern-
ment. But the ambition of those far-
reaching men knows no limit. In
addition to real estate, their ownership
extends over various descriptions of per-
sonal property, including stock, cars and
locomotives without number, and among
them one piece of machinery used for all
manner of dirty work. If the representa-
tives of the State in the Senate had been as
faithless as others to the interests of San
Francisco, there is no doubt that the bill
granting the Island to the Central Pacific
Railroad Company would have passed that
body also.

HOW GOAT ISLAND WAS DEFEATED.

It came to the Senate with all the eclat

that could be given it by lobbyists in the
shape of members of Congr* ss, and ex-
members. Its friends expected to obtain
for it a reference that would hasten its con-
sideration and passage, but in this they
were thwarted. In view of the interest felt
in its retention by the Government for
defensive purposes, I moved the reference
of the bill to the Committee on Military
Affairs, and by resolution of the Senate,
called for information upon the subject
from the War Department. This effectually
precluded further action upon it for that
session ; and the information ' that is
expected from the military authorities next
winter, together with the exertions of Sen-
ators who have the welfare of the country
rather than the interests of monopolies at
heart, will be sufficient, I trust, to defeat it
then. With the opposition of the two Sen-
ators for California, much stronger reasons,
I believe, than have yet been promulgated
will have to be found for its passage. While
railroad companies may be potential in
boards of trustees, before city councils, and
sometimes in State Legislatures, I trust they
are not yet unduly so -in the Senate of the
United States.

THE NEW PROJECT.

The other project for making Goat Island,
and the shoals adjacent, the site for a system
of warehouses was matured, so far as the
public knows, last winter. It is undoubted-
ly one of the developments of the un-
bounded ambition of the officers of the
Central Pacific Railroad Company. The
idea of building up a city there, to be the
centre of business for half the world, could
only have originated with that company,
and with that company since it has proved
its ability to control several leading branches
of business on the Pacific coast of America.
The President of the company is the author
of the statement, that a whole mile of ware-
houses was necessary for the accommoda-
tion of the wheat trade alone, this present
year. As this allegation was made in con-
nection with the Goat Island scheme, the
inference is unmistakable that this extensive
warehousing business was in contemplation
by the company. And what with all the
transportation and all the storage in their
hands, how easy to control the entire wheat
business of the State.

FARMERS AND WHARFINGERS.

The advocates of the Railroad Company's
plans have sought to carry their measures
by raising a cry against the draymen,
wharfingers and warehousemen of San
Francisco. But the ghastly character of the
sarcasm of offering relief against the meager

exactions of these men, by putting all such
business in the hands of the Central Pacific
Railroad Company, alone and without rival-
ry, is indeed appalling. The protection they
would afford the farmer, would be like that
which the wolf affords to the lamb, or the
hawk to the dove.

A THRIFTY CONCERN.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company of
California presents an example of thrift and
prosperity entirely without parallel in this
country. Scarcely ten years ago, some half
a dozen gentlemen, with limited capital and
a credit which was the legitimate offspring
of correct business habits, undertook for
the General Government the construction
of the western portion of the great Pacific
Railway. They are entitled to much con-
sideration for the boldness of their under-
taking, and more for its final success. But
the country was then engaged in a struggle
involving its very integrity, and to bind
the eastern and western parts together with
bands of iron, was a thing to be secured at
any sacrifice.

The Central Pacific Company were the
fortunate recipients of the government
bounty for that purpose, and well did they
prosecute the work entrusted to them. Far
be it from me to detract from the just credit
to which they are entitled for the dubious
venture, upon which they entered, or to
deny that patriotism was something of an
element in it, as well as money, at its incep-
tion, and while the war lasted. The under-
taking itself was only surpassed in magni-
tude by the bounty of the government, and
it will readily be conceded that, but for the
rebellion, assistance would not have been
rendered to anything like the extent it was.
The enormous liability of $81,840,322.66,
independent of first mortgage bonds, in-
curred, or paid by the Federal Government,
on Pacific Railroad account, is one of the
saddest results of that gigantic struggle.

ACCUMULATIONS OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC
COMPANY.

A provident use of the means furnished
by the general Government, and by the
people of California, has enabled the man-
agers of the Central Pacific, in the short
space of time mentioned, to become the
owners of some twenty other railroad lines,
and they now control all, or nearly all the
transportation of the Pacific coast including
that by water, as well as by land. A tem-
perate use of power so great, suddenly fall-
ing into the hands of the inexperienced trio
who now exercise it, is hardly to be
expected, It is not in accordance with our
accepted notions of weak human nature,

That few others would have done better, and
that some might have done even worse, I
am prepared to believe ; and I attribute to
eareless management in the business of the
people of California themselves, a large
proportion of the ills that are now ascribed
to this overbearing monopoly. The people
have been accustomed to acquiesce with
altogether too much alacrity in ever3r des-
cription of demands made upon them by
railroad companies. To such an extent has
the Central Pacific Company been petted and
indulged in its infancy, that like a spoilt
child it now, with unbounded assurance,
expects the people to acceed to its every
request. It will undertake no enterprise
without the public aid. If a new road is
projected, an agent is forthwith dispatched
to demand of the people of the locality pro-
posed to be visited, as the price of the
accommodation, large donations of land
and bonds, and woe to the luckless com-
munity that withholds its tribute. Punish-
ment dire, as in the case of Stockton,
Visalia, Shasta and Benicia, awaits their
refusal, and in such manner precisely are
threats now held over the heads of the
people of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

"A NEW BUSINESS PRINCIPLE.

In some cases, I am told, railroad commu-
nication is withheld, or the line turned
unnaturally aside, in punishment of re-
fractory towns. The usual business advan-
tage to the Railroad Company itself, is not
a sufficient consideration with them. Their
work is not permitted without requital to
inure to the benefit of anybody else. In
this they have evolved a new and hitherto
unheard-of business principle. It is as if
Smith should say to Brown, the owner of
an adjoining lot, " I will erect a handsome
residence on my property if you, Mr. Brown,
will make over to me a portion of yours.
The improvement of my lot will enhance
the value of yours, and though I wish to
improve mine for my own accommodation,
I will forbear to do so, unless you share
with me the advantage it may be to you,
either by giving me a portion of yours or
contributing to the expense of improving
mine." That Brown might eventually
improve his own and thus make matters
even, is not considered. Present gain is
what the railroad company are after, in
every instance, and present gain, even
though it may cripple the energies of those
upon whom the railroad when completed
will depend. This new economy stops
hardly short of killing the goose that lays
the golden egg. It is a sort of cuttlefish
policy that reaches forth in every direction,
and appropriates to itself everything, upon
which its long, slimy tentacles can fasten.

It is a policy of intense selfishness, of great
greed of gain. It ignores the past, and con-
templates the future solely, in reference to
the accumulation of wealth and power.

RESERVED RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE.

Owing to the assumptions — I had almost
said, audacity — of the Railroad Companies,
the people, for the time, seem to have for-
gotten their rights in connection with rail-
roads. It is one of the plainest principles
of law that parties in interest should be
protected, and that those who provide the
means for a venture are entitled to a voice
in its management. So far as those Pacific
Railroad corporations that have been the
recipients of United States bonds, are con-
cerned, there is nothing left to doubt on this
head. In each of the laws of Congress re-
lating to those companies, the right, in spec-
ific terms, is reserved, to alter, amend, or
repeal such laws. These public acts have
constituted, and do constitute, a full and
complete notice to all persons of the rights
of the government. Every one, therefore,
who has become interested in these com-
panies or invested in their securities, has
done so with his eyes open. The right to
modify those laws is undoubted, and it only
requires that determination in the people
that belongs to freemen, and corresponding
virtue in their representatives, to correct all
the abuses of those corporations, including
those which relate to fares and freights, as
well as toother subjects. Those roads were
constructed and equipped almost exclusive-
ly upon public credit and with public
moneys, and the public is to-day, under
every fair intendment of law, by far the
largest owner in them. Congress may, at
any time, by authorizing the appointment
of additional government directors, compel
an accounting of the agents who have had
these disbursements in charge. In this re-
spect the General Government has been a
little more careful than the State. The
former has, up to this time, merely neglect-
ed the exercise of its prerogatives, while the-
latter has failed to reserve them.

SUBSCRIBERS NOT OBJECTIONABLE.

- Referring to the railroad propositions
now pending in this city — if I may be in-
dulged a further word concerning them — I
will say that if the people could retain the
interest to which their contributions would
justly entitle them, and so be able to pre-
vent the railroads from being converted
into engines of oppression, there would be-
less objection to these so-called subsidy
measures.

But the people are told, in the first place,
that they ought to contribute large sums of

money to promote these useful agencies of
commerce; and, in the next place, that such
contributions, though forced it may be
from an unwilling people, in great part
must be in the form of absolute donations.
Such propositions have neither the founda-
tion of justice nor the encouragement of
law. They are unreasonable in every res-
pect, and if really the offspring of a sound
mind, must have had the paternity of a
sickly imagination.

DUTY OF OUR AUTHORITIES.

THie right to dispose of property by abso-
lute gift implies the highest description of
ownership; and to say that any person,
family, firm, corporation or community
having money or property to dispose of, or
the ability to raise money or property, can
dispose of the same by absolute gift, and
yet lack the power to make reservation
regarding the same — in other words, that
the authorities of San Francisco can raise a
large amount of money by taxation, or
bond the credit of the city to the extent of
millions, to aid a railroad corporation, but
can retain no rights in the same — is to give
utterance to a most unnatural doctrine; and
if the law be really the perfection of reason,
a doctrine that is wholly untenable.
If, however, tinder some technical provi-
sion of the statutes of California, which
seem, as a general thing, to have been
framed in reference to the interest of rail-
road companies rather than the people, the
corporate authorities of San Francisco may
give away the money and property of their
•own to another corporation without re-
serve, there is certainly no obligation upon
them to do so.

If the money of the people cannot be
invested for the benefit of the people, they
can at least refuse to invest it for the benefit
of another. There is no occasion for hot
haste in this matter. Let them withhold
action until, by a change of the law, or
otherwise, they can exercise some discre-
tion over that which belongs to themselves
alone.

THE CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY
FOR THEMSELVES.

The owners of the Central Pacific Rail-
;road, though under so many and such vast
obligations to the people, give little thought
to the interests of the public in the manage-
ment of their concerns. They are only in-
cited b> a desire to promote their own pri-
vate fortunes. Their frequent intermeddling
with the politics of the country, for the pro-
motion of subsidy, schemes ; and their in-
timate association with a gang of potitical
harpies, whose sole .aim is the plunder ofj

the people, is sufficient proof of this state-
ment. Should the public good happen to
accord with the interests of the company, it
might possibly be promoted, but I should
say, even then, with a degree of reluctance.

COMPETING ROAD AND THE REMEDY.

This policy of the Central Company has
driven the people of California to the con-
clusion that their only safety is in a com-
peting railroad across the continent. But
another, and earlier, and more certain reme-
dy might be found in the assertion of the
voice of the public in these concerns. This
can only be achieved by a determined effort,
on the part of the people themselves, to
overthrow the political power of the Rail-
road Company. This involves a direct
issue, but it can be accomplished in no other
way, for the genius of the company is man-
ifest in the manipulation, through its agents,
of both political organizations. To me, it
seems clear, that this is the available path
out of our difficulties. To construct a com-
peting road is desirable, and must, and will
be done ; but it is the work of years, and in-
volves the expenditure of many millions of
money, while the latter remedy only requires
the exercise of a little wholesome deter-
mination on the part of the people. They
can, without delay, this very year, and the
next, and as often as they will, control by
their votes this arrogant monopoly, and de-
prive it of all power to do mischief. Even
if the people had not that sort of an interest
in railroads, which is acquired by the con-
tribution of means to their construction, and
only such an interest as public policy re-
quires, that the commonwealth shall ex-
ercise over common carriers, they would be
justified in restricting them to legitimate
business, and in regulating freights and
fares by law ; and how much greater war-
rant is there for such a step, when the people
have contributed of their means, without
stint, to the construction of those roads.

THE ISSUE MUST BE MADE FOR SUPREMACY.

It is becoming more and more apparent
every day that the issue must be made.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature,
and the policy of the railroad monopoly is
destruction of the public welfare. Salus
populi est supreme/, lex. While the project
for another Pacific railroad is well so far as
it goes, it does not at all meet the emergency.
First demonstrate that this hated monopoly
has not the absolute mastery of the people,
and competing railroads, that will be such in
fact,will follow fast. Without such demon-
stration, no really competing railroad will
ever be successful. The peo pie being power-
less, it will be the easiest thing in nature

for the monopoly to control any other line
oi" railroad, no matter where, or by whom
constructed.

STRUGGLE BETWEEN MONOPOLY AND THE

It is not to he ignored that a contest
between the railroad monopoly and the
people for supremacy in this State will be
one of a desperate character. It will be that
of a well organized moneyed institution,
accustomed to triumph, on one side,
against a scattered and distracted force on
the other. A struggle of this character can
only be made successful, I say, by throwing
away all other considerations. By doing
this, that siiccess is certain. The people
vindicated their power last year, by the
election of a Governor opposed to monopo-
lies, but the victory proved to be almost a
barren one, for it presently turned out that
the majority of the Legislature, elected at
the same time, were in the opposite interest.
The election was carried to success on an
anti-subsidy platform, and under an ex-
press pledge for a repeal of the Five per
cent, law; but that same law is still upon
the Statute books, and is to-day the cause
of unbounded annoyance to the people of
this city. This example of political decep-
tion is sufficient to show the necessity of
disregarding all other issues, when a con-
test with the Railroad monopoly arises.

SUBSIDIES NO RELIEF.

You look in vain for a remedy, in the
competing railway project alone ; ten mil-
lions or twenty, or even forty million dol-
lars will fail to afford you the relief you
desire, while the political power of the State
is permitted to remain in the hands of the
Central Pacific Railroad and their strikers.
While you are exhausting your strength
upon another road — the Central Pacific

Railroad Company will be increasing in
power and ability, to control it when done,
and control it they will.

THE REMEDY LIES IN THE GUARDED BALLOT.

First shake off the incubus. Loosen by
your votes the legs of this old man of the
sea, now. so tightly entwined about your
necks. Make California a free State, and
all difficulty about competing railroads will
vanish as mist before the rising sun. The
future prosperity of California is more
deeply involved in these railroad questions
than can be easily estimated. There was
never a greater truth uttered than that
" eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
Time revolves, and a people that would be
independent must keep pace with the pro-
gress of events. To halt, is to be trampled
under foot. The enemy that would filch
away your rights is always among you 5
yesterday in one form, to-day in another,
and to-morrow, fear not but that he will
assume still another. Yesterday, by altering
your ballots, he would rob you of the mil-
lion you refused him ; to-day, by similar
means, if necessary, he would take two and
a half millions more, and to-morrow, with-
out asking your leave, as much as he will.
But be not discouraged, the prize you con-
tend for is worth all it will cost — your own
happiness and prosperity is involved, and
that of your children and your children's
children. Be inspired by thought of the
country you occupy. What fairer place on
the foot-stool of God than California ? Half
way between the East and the West, she
combines all civilizations — the old and the
new, the vigorous and the enduring. The
greatest diversity and abundance of pro-
ducts to be found in any one place on earth
adorn her markets. In all material advan-
tages, in all the gifts of heaven, she abounds.
Let it never be said that she lacks only
men, independent men, to guide and guard
her destiny.

COMMUNICATION

FROM

LELAND STANFORD

TO THE

COMMITTEE ON CORPORATIONS OF THE SENATE.

To the Honorable the Committee on Corporations of the Senate:

The various bills before the Legislature upon the "subject
of railroads are calculated to affect so seriously the interests of the
railroad companies, as well as that of the people, that I do not deem
apology necessary for desiring to jfiace before your Committee a few
suggestions that occur to me as especially important for your Commit-
tee to consider in connection with the proposed legislation.

From the high character of your Committee, it is safe to assume it
will approach the consideration of the various bills without perjudice,
and with the determination to act justly and as wisely as possible
towards individuals and the people.

A more important subject than that of transportation can scarcely
come before the Legislature of a State.

I shall not err much in the statement that the present system of rail-
roads of this State is saving to the people, in the difference of the
present cost of transportation from what it would be for the same busi-
ness by other means of transportation, about fifteen million dollars an-
nually. Other benefits, such as increased value and developments, may
well be considered, but though immense, they are not so definite.

The bonded indebtedness of one railroad company with which I am
connected, including lien of the Government of the United States, is, in
round numbers, eighty-one million dollars.

There are lai*ge amounts of bonded indebtedness of other roads.
Need more be said of the importance of the subject to secure your
gravest attention ?

These railroads have been built, the indebtedness incurred upon the
faith of the people, that the laws as they existed, and which brought
the companies into existence, should not be changed to their prejudice. Is
not the good faith of the people so pledged ? Have no rights vested in
the investors in railroads and railroad securities ? These are questions
that eveiy stockholder and every creditor of railroad companies has a
right to ask; and if the answer is in the negative, then what is the re-
sult ? Why, that the investors may find that their property may be
confiscated without compensation; and such, let me add, would in great
part be the case should the present bills before the Legislature become
laws. Would or could the railroads have been built and the bonds
negotiated had the parties anticipated such laws possible ?

If there are no vested rights attaching to the investments in rail-
roads, then, of course, from the announcement of the fact, future invest-

CALIFORN1A STATE LIBRAI

ments in railroads must cease, and it must be assumed that the build'
ing of railroads, by or through individuals, is not desired nor to be
allowed in this State.

If this be the case, then we are to have no more railroads constructed,]
or the State itself is to construct them

Are not the deductions and the queries above stated legitimate, from;
the proposition to legislate injuriously to the interests of railroads ?

The causes for adverse legislation to railroads, with all the attendant I
uncertainty and instability, will always exist as they do now.

I submit that if the State does not choose to assume the ownership
and construction of railroads, that the true way to secure cheapness is
to secure investors against injurious change of their charters, and to
place as few hardens as possible upon the operations of the i*ailroads.

The cheapest transportation by railroad in the world — the amount of
business, character of roads and attendant circumstances considered
— is in the State of California. If your Commitiee choose to inquire, itfi
will find that several railroads of this State have not yet reached a pay-
ing basis, and none a dividend basis, aside from the Central Pacific, to
the main line of which this legislation is not applicable. Should the
bills before the legislature become laws, they will cause practical repu-
diation, because of the inability of the railroad companies under them to
meet their obligations. Are there any prepared to assume or justify
this responsibility ?

Certainly the people of the State will not tolerate such a result, and
will not knowingly be unjust; nor will they permit it in their repre-
sentatives— their good faith untarnished and inviolable they will main-
tain. I am convinced the agitation now existing upon the subject oil
railroads, which, coming naturally in part from the desire of the people :
to do their business at the lowest possible expense, arises from misap-
prehension of the facts. It is for your Committee to make an exhaus-
tive examination into the facts appertaining to rates, that you and the.
people may understand the important question before you. Nothing:
short of this will settle anything, or give security or satisfaction to any,
save perhaps a few who may find an individual advantage in the ob-
scurity that permits of agitation. But may it not well be asked why
should investments in railroads not be encouraged, and their stability
permitted and secured ? Are not these investments of a highly benefi-
cial character ? If additional railroads are to be had, and competition
secured, then there must be stability to the laws, and security to the
rights under them. The mere suggestion of the instability of laws af-
fecting railroads has already substantially destroyed their credit
abroard, and stopped construction, and inflicted incalculable injury to
the country.

Any information calculated to elucidate the questions involved by the
subject before your Committee, and in my power to supply, will bes
cheerfully furnished.

So far as alleged abuses are concerned, investigation will show that
they are mostly imaginary; but the companies will gladly correct any.
that exists upon their being pointed out, and will welcome any assist-
ance to prevent the occurrence of similar, or others, in the future.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

LELAND STANFOED.

San Francisco, Jan. 22, 1874-

. J>V

a is

The Central Pacific Railroad Company

IN EQUITABLE ACCOUNT WITH

The Unjted States,

GROWING OUT OF THE

ISSUE OF SUBSIDY BONDS IN AID OF CONSTRUCTION.

A REVIEW OF THE TESTIMONY AND EXHIBITS

PRESENTED BEFORE THE

PACIFIC RAILWAY COMMISSION,

APPOINTED ACCORDING TO THE

ACT OF CONGRESS, APPROVED MARCH 3d, 1887.

By ROSCOE CONKLING and
WILLIAM D. SHIPMAN,
Of Counsel for the Central Pacific R. R. Co.

lefa-^ork:

HENRY BESSEY, PRINTER,
No. 47 Cedar Street.

1887.

CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY

CONTENTS

Page
I. The public policy that led to the passage of the Act of

Congress, approved July 1, 1862, entitled "An Act to aid

in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from

the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to

the Government the use of the same for postal, military

and other purposes," 5 to 19

II. Contract between the United States and the Central Pacific
Railroad Company, formed by the passage of the Act of
Congress of 1862, the acceptance of its terms and the
manner of its performance, 19 to 26

III. Change of Contract by the Act of Congress of 1864, . . 27

IV. The difficulty of construction and the great cost of the
Central Pacific Road, 28 to 41

V. Observance by the Central Pacific of its obligations to

the Government, . . . . . . . . . 41 to 54

VI. Dividends, 54 to 66

VII. Cost of the War in Utah, 66, 67

VIII. Contracts let to Charles Crocker & Co., and the Contract
and Finance Company, for the construction of the Central
Pacific Railroad from Sacramento to Promontory, . . 67 to 72

IX. Contract and Finance Company, . . . . . 72 to 80

X. The purchase and building of roads consolidated with

the Central Pacific of California, 81 to S6

XI. Purchase of the stock of the California Pacific Rail-
road, 86, 87

XII. Diverting traffic from aided to non-aided lines, . . 88 to 95

XIII. Influencing legislation, 95 to 104

XIV. Disastrous effects of the " Thurman Bill" on the indebt-
edness of the Central Pacific to the Government, . . 104 to 120

XV. The indebtedness of the Central Pacific to the United

States, 120 to 134

To the Commissioners appointed by the President
of the United States under the provisions of the
Act of Congress, entitled "An Act authorizing
an investigation of the books, accounts and
methods of e-ailroads which have received aid
from the United States, and for other purposes."
Approved March 3, 1887.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company submit this statement,
and ask that it may accompany your report to the President :

The public policy that led to the passage of the Act
of Congress, approved July 1, 1862, entitled "An Act to
" aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line
" from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and to
" secure to the government the use of the same fob
" postal, military and other purposes."

The project of a road to connect the Mississippi with the
Pacific Ocean was first brought into public notice by Mr. Asa
Whitney, who, from 1844 to 1850, agitated the scheme in
addresses to State Legislatures and popular meetings. His
proposition was to construct a road by the sale of the public
lands along its line, and he asked from Congress a free grant of
alternate sections for a width of thirty miles on each side to be
given to himself and his heirs and assigns for that purpose.

His design was to commence at Prairie du Chien, on the
Mississippi, crossing the Rocky Mountains at South Pass, and
fixing the principal Pacific terminus on Vancouver Sound, with a
branch from some convenient point west of the mountains to San
Francisco. Among the objects he desired to accomplish was, to
make the route of Asiatic commerce to Europe through the
United States.
2

To that end, in the spring of 1844 he embarked from China
for New-York with the determination to devote his life to the
work of establishing a means of cheap and easy communication
across our continent between the European population on one side
of us, and all Asia, with its seven hundred millions of people, on
the other.

To him, undoubtedly, belongs the credit of having first formu-
lated a practicable scheme for the construction of a trans-conti-
nental railway ; though, in 1836, John Plumbe, a Welshman by
birth, a civil engineer by profession, called, at Dubuque, Iowa,
the first public meeting for the purpose of agitating the subject
of building a trans-continental railway.

In 183*7 Dr. Hartley Carver published, in the New- York Courier
and Enquirer, an article advocating the construction of a Pacific
Railroad.

But it has been recently claimed by Mr. E. V. Smalley, in his
"History of the Northern Pacific Railroad," that as early as 1834,
(possibly 1833,) Dr. Samuel Bancroft Barlow, of Granville, Mass.,
advocated the construction of a railroad from New-York to the
mouth of the Columbia River, by direct appropriations from the
Treasury of the United States.

In the Senate of the United States, in the Session of 1842-43,
in the consideration of the " Oregon question," Senator Servier
held that not only lands should be granted to settlers, and forts
built and garrisoned for their protection, but, if necessary, a rail-
road should be made from the Missouri to the Columbia, over
which immigrants might be conveyed in two or three days.

Senator Linn spoke upon the facility with which travel and
transportation might be effected across the continent by means of
ordinary roads at present and by railroads hereafter.

Senator McDuffie opposed these projects for the encouragement
of settlers, and ridiculed the idea that steam could ever be em-
ployed to facilitate communication across the continent between
the Columbia countries and the States of the Union.

When Mr. Whitney began his active work in connection with
the project, our Oregon possessions were all we controlled on the
Pacific Coast, and the location of the western terminus was lim-
ited accordingly. Later during his efforts we were in possession
of all the coast from the Straits of Fuca to San Diego.

In the fall of 1849 a Pacific Railroad Convention met at St.
Louis, and was presided over by Stephen A. Douglas.

It condemned Whitney's project, although, at the second ses-
sion of the 28th Congress, in the winter of 1844-45, Mr. Douglas
reported favorably on a memorial in, favor of a Pacific Railroad
presented by Mr. Whitney.

It will be remembered that a trans- continental railroad was for
many years earnestly advocated by Mr. Benton, of Missouri,,
both in his place in the Senate and in popular addresses.

The discovery, in 1847, of gold in California, and the conse-
quent settlement of that country by a large emigration from the
Atlantic and Western States, from Europe and Australia, which
commenced in 1849, brought the matter more prominently before
the Government and hastened its action.

In 1851 Senator Gwin gave notice in the Senate of the United
States of a bill for the construction of a Pacific Railroad, and in
1852 Senator Douglas reported a bill on the same subject.

On May 1st, 1852, the Legislature of California passed " An
Act granting the right of way to the United States for railroad,
purposes.'''' The preamble to the Act is as follows :

Whereas, The interests of this State, as well as those of the whole nation,,
require the immediate action of the Government of the United States for the-
construction'of a national thoroughfare connecting the navigable waters of
the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, for the purposes of national safety in the
event of war, and to promote the highest interests of the Republic.

In March, 1853, Congress made an appropriation of one hun-
dred and fifty thousand dollars, to defray the expense of the
necessary surveys ; and in that year six parties were organized
and sent out by the War Department.

In 1854, Congress made two more appropriations of forty
thousand dollars and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
respectively, for deficiencies, and for continuing the work ; and
then three additional parties were organized.

The determination of the relative practicability of the several
routes of railroad was entrusted by the Honorable Jefferson Davis,
then Secretary of War, to Captain Humphreys, of the United
States Army, who made an elaborate report, which is on file in
the War Department.

(See Report of Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, to Congress,
February 27th, 1855.)

It will be seen in the review that is here presented, that the
passage of the Act of 1862 was not forced from an unwilling
Congress by the solicitation of the Union Pacific Railroad Com-
pany or the Central Pacific Railroad Company, or by any one on
their behalf. It was not a measure conceived in any sudden
emergency ; although, no doubt, its passage was hastened by the
commencement of .'the civil war, the danger to our Pacific posses-
sions, and the necessities of the nation; but the whole subject had
been well considered for several years before that bill received
the sanction of Congress, and the approval of President Lincoln.

The attention of Congress had been called to the necessity of
aiding the construction of a trans-continental road, by messages
from three Presidents, Pierce, Buchanan and Lincoln.

Both the Republican and Democratic Conventions adopted
resolutions in^their^platforms of 1856, pledging the parties to aid
in appropriate legislation. The Democratic party, at their
National Convention, held at Charleston, South Carolina, April
23, 1860, adopted the^following preamble and resolution :

Whereas, One of the greatest necessities of the age, in a political, com-
mercial, postal Jandj military point of view, is the speedy communication
between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans ; therefore,

Be it Resolved, That this party do hereby pledge themselves to use every
means in their power to^procure the passage of some bill, to the extent of
the Constitutional authority of Congress, for the construction of a Pacific
Railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, at the earliest prac-
ticable period.

On June^llth, 1860, the Convention at Chicago that nominated
Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency

Resolved, That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively demanded
by the interests of the whole country. That the Federal Government ought
to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction, and that preliminary
thereto a'daily overland mail should be promptly established.

Prior to 1860, the Legislatures of eighteen States had passed
resolutions in favor of a railroad to the Pacific.

Apart from the question of preserving to the Union the
F'acific Coast States and Territories, and extending to the people
the protecting hand of the Government which had become neces-
sary from the events occurring in the early history of the war,
it was a matter of the highest statesmanship to furnish this
means of communication between the Missouri River and the
Pacific Ocean, and to open to civilization and settlement the
country between such points.

Mr. Whitney's original plan was, that the United States should
furnish aid to build from the Mississippi River to the Pacific ; but
in the seven or eight years that had elapsed from the time that
he had first called attention to the enterprise to the passage of
the Act of 1862, private capital had been invested to furnish rail-
roads between the Mississippi and the Missouri. When the Union
Pacific Company commenced construction in the latter part of
1864, a railroad was in operation from Hannibal, in Missouri, to
Saint Joseph, on the Missouri River, and by means of such road
and by vessel from Saint Joseph to Omaha the Union Pacific re-
ceived the material for the construction of its first one hundred
miles. In 1867 the lines of the Chicago and North Western Com-
pany were completed to Council Bluffs. But beyond the Missouri,.
and through that territory which forms the State of Nebraska, there
was a large amount of unoccupied land capable of the highest
cultivation. It will not be forgotten that one-half of the ter-
ritory of the United States is west of the Missouri, and that be-
tween that river and the Sacramento, a distance of 1,800 miles,
there is not a single navigable stream. All this territory east Of
the Sierra Nevada Mountains was, before the laws aiding the
Pacific Railroads, totally unimproved and tminhabited save by
United States troops and Indians.

When the subject of the construction of a trans-continental
railway was first proposed, the Mississippi River practically con-
stituted our western frontier, and Texas was engaged in her war
of independence. The matter had been broached in Congress be-
fore that State had come into the Union. When Mr. Douglas
introduced his first bill for the construction of a railway, the war
with Mexico had not begun. When the Mexican war was closed
there was not a single mile of railroad west of the Mississippi ;
and it was not until 1859 that the railroad system of the country

was connected with the Missouri River by the completion of the
Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad.

The most interesting history of the events preceding the con-
struction of the Pacific Railroads is to be found in the " Report
on Trans-continental Railways, 1883," made by Col. O. M. Poe,
United States Engineer and Brevet Brigadier General, to General
W. T. Sherman, and we are indebted to Col. Poe for many of the
facts above stated.

Those who then controlled the legislation of the nation saw that
it would add to the strength of the United States as an exporter
of food to turn the lands of Nebraska into cornfields, and
to bring into use such portions of the country between the Mis-
souri River and the Sierra Nevada Mountains as were suitable for
agricultural or grazing purposes : that they were but helping
the destinies of the United States, that it might feed the manu-
facturing population of the Old World. They recognized
the truism that the nation that has food to sell is the most
independent and powerful. Having control of the bread and
meat required by the populations of England, France and
Germany, it could regulate the value of the manufactured goods
it was compelled to purchase from those countries, and they recog-
nized the authority of an eminent political economist, that money
expended by a nation in the construction of works of public utility
enrich the country.

It has been well and no doubt truthfully said, that if Rome
had been able to produce the food necessary to feed her legions,
the Caesars would still be governing the world.

The late Lord Beaconsfield, when, as Mr. Disraeli, he became
the leading statesman of England, saw great danger to the
people of Great Britain from depending upon the United
States for so large a portion of their food supply. He saw,,
also, the jeopardy to its Asiatic possessions from the con-
tinual failure of the rice crops in India, and he resolved to en-
courage it to become a producer and exporter of wheat. It was
one of his quaint sayings, that England was an Asiatic instead of
a European power. And so he brought his eminent abilities to
determine whether England could not obtain its bread from Hin-
dostan instead of America ; whether its millions of subjects in
Asia could not be guarded from the risks of famine in their de-

pendence on one article of food, for whose maturity a scant rain-
fall was insufficient, by adding another more easily and certainly
produced, and containing elements that would improve the phy-
sique of the race, and so furnish to India an article that could be
readily used in exchange in the place of her silver.

To this end he consulted with and obtained the experience of
the Duke of Wellington, whose long residence in India peculiarly
fitted him to advise, and from the information so obtained, the
Government of England, of which the Earl of Derby was then
the Premier, and Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in
conjunction with the aid and assistance derived from the house
of Rothschild, conceived and carried into effect the construction
of railroads to the higher altitudes in India, where wheat could
be cultivated. And to accomplish the end in view the English
Government guaranteed the interest at the rate of five per
centum on $200,000,000, the contemplated cost of the railways
then designed.

However detrimental the result of Mr. Disraeli's plan has
proved to the farmers of this country, it is gratifying to Eng-
lishmen to remember that he lived some years after it had come
to its complete success ; for we see by returns made to Parlia-
ment, that in 1877 and 1878, the exports of wheat from India to
England were so large, as to materially reduce the demand on
this country.

Our legislators were also anxious to carry out what in reality
was the day dream of Mr. Benton, who said :

That lie hoped he might live to see a train of cars thundering down the
Eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, hearing in transit to Europe the teas,
the silks and spices of the Orient.

It may be added, that but for the construction of the Suez Canal,
the vision of the Missouri Senator would have been realized.

There were other causes that induced Congress to pass the Act
of 1862.

The first gun was fired on Sumter Friday, April 12, 1861, and
the fort was evacuated Sunday, April 14, 1861.

The battle of Bull Run was fought July 21, 1861.

On November 8, 1861, the Commander of the United States
Sloop San Jacinto arrested and took off the English Steamer

Trent, on the high seas, Messrs. Mason and Slidell, who were then
the accredited ministers of the Confederate Government to the
respective courts of England and France.

Immediately after the last date, the Asiatic Fleet of Great
Britain found the Harbor of Victoria, Vancouver^ Island, a
favorite place of rendezvous, and the fleets of Russia then in the
Pacific assembled at San Francisco, and the General commanding
the United States troops stationed at Benecia, the Presidio, Alca-
traz and Angel Island, in California, was superseded, his loyal
intent to the Government being questioned.

It will be seen there were two forces that threatened the
supremacy of the United States Government on the Pacific Coast ;
the danger of foreign invasion, and of civil commotion.

As was said by Mr. Campbell in the House of Representatives,
on April 8, 1862 :

In a recent imminent peril of a collision with a naval and commercial rival,
one that bears us no love, we ran the risk of losing, at least for a time, our
golden possessions on the Pacific for want of proper land transportation.

And Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said :

In case of a war with a foreign maritime power, the travel by the Gulf
and Isthmus of Panama would be impracticable. Any such European power
could throw troops and supplies into California much quicker than we could
by the present overland route. The enormous cost of supplying our army in
Utah may teach us that the whole wealth of the nation would not enable us
to supply a large army on the Pacific Coast. Our Western States must fall
a prey to the enemy without a speedy way of transporting our troops.

It is but history to say, that if at this time we had become in-
volved in a war with England, we could only have retained our
possessions on the Pacific by the friendship and aid of Russia.

It Avas of the utmost importance to the Treasury and the people
of the United States to retain the allegiance, trade and good
will of the people of the Pacific, and especially of California.

In 1854 the gold shipped to New- York was $46,289,000. This
shipment fell off year by year until 1859, when it was $39,831,000;
in 1860, $35,661,000; in 1861, $34,486,000; in 1862, $25,080,000.

Although the total shipment of gold from California in 1862
was $49,376,000, all over $25,080,000 was diverted from New-
York by shipments from San Francisco direct to England, in

consequence of the increasing risks of transportation caused by
Confederate cruisers, and the raising of insurance rates to five per
cent, to cover war risks.

In December, 1862, the "Ariel," from New-York to Aspinwall,
was captured by the Alabama and bonded. On her return, she
did not bring the specie awaiting her at Aspinwall, which was of
the value of about $550,000, but it was forwarded to New-York
by the United States gunboat " Connecticut."

All these causes led to the passage of the Act of 1862.

As evidencing the tone and temper of the nation, and of
Congress, towards this work, and the necessity for the legislation
then proposed, we quote briefly from the debates in the Senate.

"We should say, in anticipation, that in 1860, General Samuel R.
Curtis, then Chairman of the Pacific Railroad Committee in the
House of Representatives, reported that the aggregate amount
which was paid by the Government for the transportation of
mails, military and naval stores from the Mississippi River to the
Pacific Ocean reached more than six million dollars per annum.

In 1862 Mr. Campbell, of Pennsylvania, then Chairman of the
House Committee on the Pacific Railroads, after having obtained
from the War, Navy, Indian and Postal Departments the amounts
which those Departments were paying for transportation across
the continent, reported the sum aggregated more than $7,300,000
per annum.

It was then anticipated by Congress that the amount of bonds
to be issued for the main line and certain branches at the
Missouri end would be about sixty-five million dollars, and that
the interest would be about three million eight hundred thou-
sand ; and, as one of the Senators said, subtract three million
eight hundred thousand from seven million five hundred thousand
and yo\i have a remainder of three million seven hundred thou-
sand, which would go to make up a sinking fund for the repay-
ment by this Company of the principal of the bonds, besides
paying the actual interest on the bonds.

Why these anticipations were not fulfilled, we will hereafter
notice.

But to return to the debate in the Senate. On the 17th of
June, 1862, the bill being again under discussion, Mr. "Wilson, of
Massachusetts, made the following remarks :

I liave little confidence in the estimates made by Senators or members of
the House of Representatives as to the great profits which are to be made
and the immense business to be done by this road, I give no grudging vote
in giving aicay either money or land. I would sink one hundred millions of
dollars to build the road, and do it most cheerfully, and think I had done a
great thing for my country if I could bring it about. What are seventy-five
or a hundred millions in opening a railroad across the central regions of this
-continent, which wiU connect the •people of the Pacific and the Atlantic and
bind them together ?

And on the same day he used the following language :

As to the security the United States takes on this road, I would not give the
paper it is written on for the whole of it. I do not suppose it is ever to come back
in any form except in doing on the road the business we need, carrying our
mails and munitions of war. In my judgment we ought not to vote for the
bill with the expectation or with the understanding that the money which we
advance for this road is ever to come back into the Treasury of the United
States. I vote for the bill with the expectation that all we get out of the
road (and I think that is a great deal) will be the mail carrying and the car-
rying of munitions of war and such things as the Government needs, and I
vote for it cheerfully with that view. I do not expect any of our money
back. I believe no man can examine the subject and believe that it will
■come back in any other way than is provided for in this bill ; and that pro-
vision is for the carrying of the mails and doing certain other work for the
Government.

Mr. Wilson but spoke the sentiments of the leading Senators and
Representatives who voted for that bill. The wishes of the people,
the perils of the Government, the carrying out of its purposes in
■connecting the eastern and western sides of the continent, which it
was supposed at that time private capital was utterly unable and
unequal to accomplish, and the consequent facilities to the Gov-
ernment for the movement of the mails and munitions of war,
and the pacification and control of the Indians, and the defence of
our Pacific possessions, was a sufficient inducement, if all the aid
granted to the Companies who were to co-operate with the Gov-
ernment in the building of the road, was never returned into the
Treasury in any other form.

On the same subject, Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, said:

The Senator from Massachusetts may be entirely right, that the Govern-
ment may never receive back this money again ; and it may be that we make
the loan for the purpose of receiving the services. But it will be well to

take a mortgage, to secure the building of the road through, and then to
secure the performance of those services which we expect them to perform
in the transmission of mails and munitions of war after the road is built. I
think we had better adopt the amendment of the Committee. It will make
it safer for the Government ; safer in this regard, that we shall have the
road built, and have the service performed.

Further on in the same debate, Mr. Clark used the following
language :

Whether I am right or not, I do not build the road because I think it is to
be a paying road. I build it as a political necessity, to bind the country
together and hold it together ; and I do not care whether it is to pay or not.
Here is the money of the Government to build it with. I want to hold a
portion of the money until we get through, and then let them have it all.

Mr. Ten Eyck, of New-Jersey, used the following language :

The great object of the Pacific Railroad Bill is to have a national means
■of communication across the Continent. That is the idea which the public
have entertained for years past, and the only idea ; a great national measure
to cement the Union, to bind with a belt of iron the Atlantic and Pacific,

***** This is the inducement which the old States have in
doing what they believe will be for the benefit of the common country, to
the prejudice of the Treasury, so to speak, yet, the general returns may be
beneficial in the long run.

Mr. Collamer, of Vermont, said :

This bill carries the idea, and in this section provides for the repayment
of the loan, as gentlemen call it. In a subsequent section it is provided
that the payment shall be made in the carrying of the mail, supplies and
military stores for the Government, at fair prices, and also five per cent, of
the net proceeds or sums to be set apart for the Government. That is all
the provision there is in the bill for repayment.

Mr. Latham, of California, in the course of the same debate,
said :

The loan of the public credit at six per cent, for thirty years for sixty-five
millions, with absolute security by lien, with stipulations by sinking fund
from profits for the liquidation of the principal, official reports and other
authoritative data, show that the average annual cost, even in times of peace,
in transportation of troops, with munitions of war, subsistence and Quarter-
master supplies, may be set down at seven million three hundred thousand
dollars. The interest upon the credit loan of sixty -five millions will be

annually three million nine hundred thousand dollars, leaving a net excess
of three million four hundred thousand dollars over the present cost, appeal-
ing with great force to the economy of the measure, and showing, beyond cavil
or controversy, that the Government will not have a dime to pay on account
of its credit, nor risk a dollar by authorizing the construction of this work.

Mr. McDougal, of California, said :

As I have had occasion before to remark, the Government is now paying
over seven millions per annum for the services which this road is bound to
perform. That is about one hundred per cent, more than the maximum
interest upon the entire amount of bonds that will be issued by the United
States when the road is completed. The Government is to-day on a peace
establishment, without any war necessity, paying for the same services one
hundred per cent, more than the entire interest on the amount of bonds
called for by the bill. Besides that, it is provided that five per cent, of the
net proceeds shall be paid over to the Federal Government every year.
Now let me say, if this road is to be built, it is to be built not merely with
the money advanced by the Government, but by money out of the pockets
of private individuals. * * * * It is proposed that the Govern-
ment shall advance sixty millions, or rather their bonds at thirty years, as
the road is completed, in the course of a series of years ; that the interest at
no time can be equal to the service to be rendered by the road as it pro-
gresses ; and that the Government really requires no service except a com-
pliance on the part of the Company with the contract made. It was not
intended that there should be a judgment of foreclosure and a sale of this
road on a failure to pay. We wish it to be distinctly understood that the
bill is not framed with the intention to have a foreclosure. * * * *
In case they failed to perform their contract, that is another thing. That is
a stipulation ; that is a forfeiture, in terms of law ; a very different thing
from a foreclosure for the non-payment of bonds. The calculation can be
simply made, that at the present amount of transportation over the road,
supposing the Government did no more business, that that alone would pay
the interest and the principal of the bonds in less than twenty years, making
it a direct piece of economy if the Government had to pay for them all1.
However, I am not disposed to discuss this matter. I say it was not under-
stood that the Government was to come in as a creditor and seize the road on
the non-payment of interest. It is the business of the Government to pay
the interest because we furnish the transportation.

Mr. Sargent, then a member of the House, in the course of
the debate there on this question, used the following language :

When the road is fully completed and we are experiencing all the security
and commercial advantages which it will afford, the annual interest will be
less than four millions, and that sum will be but gradually reached year

afterjyear. The War Department has paid out, on an average, five millions
per year'for the last five years, for transportation to the Pacific Coast, and
the mails cost one million dollars more at their present reduced rates. The
flaving to the Government would be two millions a year on these items alone.

Hereafter we will point out that the failure to realize the an-
ticipations of the Senators and Representatives who voted for
this bill cannot be ascribed to these corporations. We say, with
all due respect, that if the Government of the United States had
performed its part of the contract, it would have "been fully reim-
bursed for the amount of interest it has paid," and have had a
fund now in hand for the retirement of bonds loaned.

As illustrating the situation presented on the part of the Central
Pacific, and although we shall have occasion again to comment upon
the case of The United States against The Union Pacific Railroad
Company, its inspiration, purposes, and the effect of its decision,
we call attention to the language of Mr. Justice Davis, who then
spoke for the Supreme Court of the United States, reported in
1 Otto, 91 IT. S., at page 79, (October, 1875,) and following. Any
history of the Pacific Railroad would be incomplete without citing
the language of this great jurist :

Many of the provisions in the original Act of 1862 are outside of the usual
course of legislative action concerning grants to railroads, and cannot be
properly construed without reference to the circumstances which existed
when it was passed. The war of the Rebellion was in progress, and, owing
to complications with England, the country had become alarmed for the
safety of our Pacific possessions. The loss of them was feared, in case those
complications should result in an open rupture ; but, even if this fear were
groundless, it was quite apparent that we were unable to furnish that degree
of protection to the people occupying them which every Government owes
to its citizens. It is true the threatened danger was happily averted, but
wisdom pointed out the necessity of making suitable provision for the future.
This could be done in no better way than by the construction of a railroad
across the continent. Such a road would bind together the widely separated
parts of our common country, and furnish a cheap and expeditious mode
for the transportation of troops and supplies. If it did nothing more than
afford the required protection to the Pacific States, it was felt that the
Government, in the performance of an imperative duty, could not justly
withhold the aid necessary to build it ; and so strong and pervading was this
opinion, that it is by no means certain that the people would not have
justified Congress if it had departed from the then settled policy of the
country regarding works of internal improvement, and charged the Govern-
ment itself with the direct execution of the enterprise. This enterprise was

viewed as a national undertaking for national purposes ; and the public-
mind was directed to the end in view, rather than to the particular means-
of securing it. Although this road was a military necessity, there were
other reasons active at the time in producing an opinion for its completion,
besides the protection of an exposed frontier. There was a vast unpeopled
territory lying between the Missouri and Sacramento Rivers, which was-
practically worthless without the facilities afforded by a railroad for the
transportation of persons and property. With its construction, the agricul-
tural and mineral resources of this territory could be developed, settlements-
made where settlements were possible, and thereby the wealth and power of
the United States largely increased ; and there was also the pressing want,
in time of peace even, of an improved and cheaper method for the trans-
portation of the mails and of supplies for the army and the Indians. It was-
in the presence of these facts that Congress undertook to deal with the
subject of this railroad. The difficulties in the way of building it were great,
and by many intelligent persons considered insurmountable. * * * *
Of necessity there were risks to be taken, in aiding with money or bonds an.
enterprise unparalleled in the history of any free people, the completion of
which, if practicable at all, would require, as was supposed, twelve years ;.
but these risks were common to both parties. Congress was obliged to'
assume its share, and advance the bonds, or abandon the enterprise, for,
clearly, the grant of lands, however valuable after the road was finished,,
could not be available as a resource for building it.

And as a matter of convenience for the argument, we cite
at this time the language of Mr. Justice Miller, in delivering
the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the
case of the United States vs. The Union Pacific Railroad Com-
pany et al., at the October term, 1878. (98 U. S. p. 619.)

There are many matters alleged in the bill in this case, and many points-
ably presented in argument which have received our careful attention, but
of which we can take no special 'notice in this opinion. We have devoted
so much space to the more important matters that we can only say that under
the view whieh we take of the scope of the enabling statute, they furnish
no ground for relief in this suit. The liberal manner in which the Govern-
ment has aided this Company in money and land is much urged upon us as
a reason why the rights of the United States should be liberally construed.
This matter is fully considered in the opinion of the Court, already cited in
the case of the United States vs. The Union Pacific Railroad Company, (91
U. 8. 72,) in which it is shown that it was a wise liberality for which the
Government has received all the advantages for which it bargained and
more than it expected. In the feeble infancy of this child of its creation,
when its life and usefulness were very uncertain, the Government, fully
alive to its importance, did all that it could to strengthen, to support and to
sustain it. Since it has grown to a vigorous manhood it may not have dis-

played the gratitude which so much care called for. If this be so, it is but
another instance of the absence of human affections which is said to charac-
terize all corporations. It must, however, be admitted that it has fulfilled
the purpose of its creation and realized the hopes which were then cherished,
and that the Government has found it a useful agent, enabling it to save
vast sums of money in the transportation of troops, mails and supplies, and
in the use of the telegraph. A Court of Justice is called on to inquire, not
into the balance of benefits and favors on each side of this controversy, but
into the rights of the parties as established by law, as found in their
contracts, as recognized by the settled principles of equity, and to decide
accordingly.

II.

Contract between the United States and the Central.
Pacific Railroad Company, formed bt the passage of
the Act of Congress of 1862, the acceptance of its-
Terms, AND THE MANNER OF ITS PERFORMANCE.

By the passage of the Act of 1862, and the acceptance of its-
terras by the Central Pacific Railroad Company, a contract was-
created between it and the Government, by which the Company
undertook to construct a railroad and telegraph line, from the
Pacific Coast, at or near San Francisco, or the navigable waters of
the Sacramento River to the eastern boundary of California,
provided that the said Company should reach the boundary be-
fore it met the line of the Union Pacific ; the Union Pacific
being authorized, with the consent of the State of California, to
construct through California, until it met the track of the Central
Pacific, and if the Central Pacific should first arrive at the
boundary of said State, then it might continue the construction
of its railroad and telegraph line eastward, to such point as it
might connect with the Union Pacific.

In aid of such construction the United States agreed to donate
every alternate section of public land designated by odd numbers,
to the amount of five alternate sections per mile, on each side of
said road on the line thereof, within ten miles of each side of the
road not sold, reserved or otherwise disposed of ; the title of said
land to be vested in the Company when it should have completed
forty consecutive miles of railroad and telegraph ; and that on
completion of said section, the Secretary of the Treasury should

issue to the Company bonds of the United States, payable thirty
years after date, bearing six per cent, per annum interest, payable
semi-annually, to the amount of sixteen of said bonds per mile,
but from the Western base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, [such
point to be fixed by the President of the United States,] the
bonds to be issued should be at the rate of $48,000 per mile for
one hundred and fifty miles eastwardly ; and between the
mountainous sections at the rate of $32,000 per mile ; the
Central Pacific to complete fifty miles of said railroad and tele-
graph line within two years of filing their consent to the provi-
sions of this Act, and fifty miles each year thereafter; the entire
line between the Missouri River and the Sacramento to be com-
pleted so as to form a continuous line of railroad, and ready for
use by the first day of July, 1876.

The Act provides that the issue of said bonds and delivery to
the Company shall ipso facto constitute a first mortgage on the
whole line of the railroad and telegraph, together with the rolling
stock, fixtures, and property of every kind and description, and
in consideration of which, said bonds may be issued.

That the grants of the said lands and bonds are made upon
condition that said Company shall pay said bonds at maturity,
and shall keep its said railroad and telegraph line in repair and
use, and shall at all times transmit dispatches over said telegraph
line and transport mails, troops and munitions of war, supplies
and public stores on said railroad for the Government whenever
required to do so by any department thereof ; and that the Govern-
ment shall at all times have the preference in the use of the same
for all the purposes aforesaid at fair and reasonable rates of com-
pensation, not to exceed the amount paid by private parties for
the same kind of service ; and all compensation for services
rendered for the Government shall be applied to the payment of
said bonds and interest until the whole amount is fully paid ; and
after said railroad is completed, until said bonds and interest are
paid, at least five per centum of the net earnings of said road
shall be annually applied in the payment thereof.

These are the express terms of the contract on the face
of the agreement. But there was an implied, if not an ex-
press understanding between the contracting parties, as voiced
in the various debates in both branches of Congress, that in ad-

dition to the five per cent, of the net earnings to be paid annually
after the completion of the road, the Government would look
only to the performance of that portion of the contract by which
the Railroad Company undertook to do its telegraph business and
transport its mails, troops and munitions of war, and public
stores, for the repayment of the principal and interest of the
bonds.

From those debates, and especially from such portions which
we have heretofore referred to, it is evident that not a single vote
was cast in favor of the passage of this Act with any expectation
that the Government would receive from the Railroad Com-
panies in re-imbursement one dollar in addition to the five per
cent., and the services rendered in such transportation.

It will be remembered that Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts,
said :

As to the security the United States takes in this road, I would
not give the paper it is written on for the whole of it. I do not sup-
pose it is ever to come back in any form except in doing on the road the
business we need, carrying our mails and munitions of war. We ought not
to vote for the bill with the expectation or with the understanding that the
money which we advance is ever to come back into the Treasury of the
United States. I vote for the bill with the expectation that all we get out
of the road (and I think that is a good deal) will be the mail carrying aud
the carrying of munitions of war, and such things as the Government needs.
I believe no man can examine the subject and believe it will come back in
any other way than is provided for in this bill, and that provision is for the
carrying of the mails and doing certain other work for the Government.

Mr. Howard, of Michigan, the Chairman of the Senate Com-
mittee on Pacific Railroads, who reported the bill of 1862, said :

When the road shall have been completed, assuming the bonds issued to
be $62,880,000, the maximum estimate and the entire interest will be but
$3,773,800 per annum. The present able Chairman of the House Committee
took occasion to inquire directly of the Government the exact cost to the
Government of the transportation provided for by this bill, and found it to
be $7,357,000, or about one hundred per cent, more than the full charge of
interest against the Government when the road shall have been completed.
I now call the attention of Senators to this consideration, or rather to this
pregnant fact, not to be ignored or avoided, that the difference between the
interest ($3,773,800) and the present cost, ($7,357,000,) with the rive per
cent, reserved to the Government by the bill, would necessarily pay the
Government bonds and interest years before the Government bonds would
mature.
3

Mr. Col lamer said :

The bill carries the idea, and this section provides for the repayment of
the loan, as gentlemen call it. In a subsequent section, it is provided that
the payment shall he made in the carrying of the mails, supplies and military
stores for the Government at fair prices, and also five per cent, of the net pro-
ceeds or sums to be set apart for the Government. That is all the provi-

SION THERE IS IN THE BILL FOR REPAYMENT.

Mr. Wade said :

Sir, your money will not be lost. In a pecuniary point of view, it will be a
gain to this Government, to make these facilities for settling this wilderness.
It will strengthen us in a military point of view. It will strengthen the
Union, which is more than all. It will do more for the country than we
have done for any number of years past.

j*" In' the House of Representatives, Mr. Campbell said :

I have shown that the army and navy transportation and postal service to
the Pacific Coast cost the Government annually $7,357,781. Take then the
annual interest from the annual expenditure, and we have left a sinking
fund of $3,465,701, a sum more than sufficient to extinguish the bonds before
they become due, or what is the same thing in effect, saved to the Govern-
ment by cheapening expenditure in that direction.

Mr. Phelps, of California, said :

The gentleman from Pennsylvania has shown us by authentic figures that
the cost of transporting military and naval stores and the mails to the Pacific
Coast amounts to seven millions per annum, and that of this sum an amount
more than large enough to pay the interest on the bonds to be issued under
this bill would be saved by the construction of this road.

Mr. Kelly said :

Can there be any question that our country can bear such an augumenta-
tion of its annual expenditure, or will it harm, if posterity, being blessed by
this work, should, perchance, have to pay the principal of the credit
invested.

Mr. Sargent said :

The bonds will be issued slowly, few at a time, as the work progresses. It
will be probably two years before any bonds will be issued, for surveys have
to be made. * * * The whole amount of interest to be paid up to
1866 will be but $168,000, and up to 1867, but $504,000 ; and when the road
is fully completed, and we are experiencing all the security and commercial

advantages which, it will afford, the annual interest will be less than
$4,000,000. The War Department has paid out, on an average, $5,000,000
per year for the past five years, for transportation to the Pacific Coast, and
the mails cost $1,000,000 more, at their present reduced rates. The saving
•of the Government would be two millions per year on these items alone.
***** The Mormon war cost millions to the Government —
probably one-third the amount contemplated by this bill — and a very large
proportion of that cost was in the item of transportation, and much of it on
account of the necessary delay in military movements, without railroads over
such distance. That war never could have occurred, with a railroad across
the continent. With such a road you would avoid Indian wars, which cost
millions to the Government, through the Territories traversed by it.

Mr. White, of Indiana, expressed the views certainly then en-
tertained by a majority of the Representatives. He said :

Now, sir, I contend, that although this bill provides for the repayment of
iihe money advanced by the Government, it is not expected that a cent of the
money will ever oe repaid. If the Committee intended that it should be re-
paid, they would have required it to be paid out of the gross earnings of the
road, as is done with the roads in Missouri, Iowa and other States, and not
the net earnings. There is not, perhaps, one Company in a hundred, where
the roads are most prosperous, that has any net at all. I undertake to say
that not a cent of these advances will ever be regaid, nor do I think it desi-
rable that they should be repaid. The road is to be the highway of the
nation, and we ought to take care that the rates provided shall be moderate.
I think, therefore, that this will turn out a mere bonus to the Pacific Rail-
road, as it ought to be.

The amount of bonds actually issued to the two corporations,
the Union and Central Pacific, was $55,092,192, but it was esti-
mated in these debates, as we have seen, that the amount required to
be issued would be about sixty-five millions ; and that several of the
speakers stated that the Government was then paying seven million
three hundred thousand dollars per annum for the service which the
Union and Central Pacific Railroad Companies were required by the
Act to perform ; and as about one-half of that sum would pay the
annual interest, there would be enough of the annual compensa-
tion remaining to pay off and discharge the principal of the bonds
within twenty years from the completion of the road.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company tried in good faith to
comply with the contracts it had entered into by accepting the
terms of the Act of 1862.

In the debate on the amendment of 1864 Mr. Thaddeus Ste-
vens said :

Certain it is that upon the California side of the line they have gone to
work with excellent zeal. * * * The Company have raised already upon
that side of the mountains over fifteen millions of dollars.

It managed, by the sale of such portions of its stock as it coidd
dispose of, and by contracting debts on the individual credit of
its promoters, to build thirty-one miles of its road, from Sacra-
mento to Newcastle. But until the passage of* the Act of July
2, 1864, it was unable to construct beyond that point for lack of
the necessary funds.

On the 8th day of January, 1863, it commenced the construc-
tion of its road at the City of Sacramento.

The City of San Francisco had been instructed by an Act of
the Legislature to subscribe for six hundred thousand dollars of
the stock of the Central Pacific, and to issue its bonds for that
amount in payment.

The City of Sacramento was authorized to subscribe for three
hundred thousand dollars of stock ; and the County of Placer
for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

The State of California had enacted that it would pay the
interest on one million five hundred thousand of the bonds issued
by the Central Pacific for the period of twenty years.

The citizens of San Francisco resisted the subscription author-
ized by the Legislature, and the contest which resulted in the
Courts, in addition to the cost of the litigation, besides causing
embarrassing and ruinous delay, seriously affected the financial
credit of the Central Pacific, and caused such a depreciation of
its stock as to render it unmarketable.

The people of San Francisco were afraid that the City would
become liable for a portion of the debt incurred by the Central
Pacific in the construction and equipment of its road, and although
the highest tribunal of the State sustained the validity of the
legislation by which the municipality was directed to subscribe
for and pay for the stock, and although various writs of mandamus
were issued commanding the officers of the City to subscribe for
and to issue the bonds in payment of the stock, the Railroad
Company found it for its interest to compromise the litigation by
accepting from- the City a donation of four hundred thousand

dollars of its bonds, and releasing it from its obligation to make
the directed subscription.

The litigious spirit manifested by the authorities of San Fran-
cisco had its effect on those controlling the finances of the other
Counties and of the State of California, and until the com-
promise had been made with the City, the promised aid from the
State and Counties of Sacramento and Placer was not available.

The promoters had used their own private credit in building
the thirty-one miles. They could not have the work of construc-
tion accepted by the United States until they had forty con-
secutive miles completed. The Company was therefore unable
to obtain the assistance, either in the way of bonds or lands
contemplated in the Act of 1862. The Government then held
the prior lien, and it was expected would take the property.

This delay, as shown in the testimony of Governor Stanford,
was fraught with most momentous results to the interests of the
corporation, as well as to the advancement of the City of San Fran-
cisco. If the aid that had been promised by the State of California
and the Counties of San Francisco, Sacramento and Placer had
been cheerfully yielded, after the necessary legislative authority
had been obtained, the Company could, in the winter of 1863-64,
have constructed several miles, of the most costly character, of its
work over the Sierra ISTevadas. It was an unusually fine and open
winter, the temperature being mild and the fall of snow light.
The cost of the work that winter, in comparison with the
same work in the succeeding - winter, would no doubt have
been from twenty to twenty-five per cent. less. And at this
time the Union Pacific, not being able to find means to carry out
its contract, formed by its acceptance of the Act of 1862, had not
commenced the work ; and there can be no doubt, that if the
Central Pacific had been enabled to continue its construction
eastward, without any delay after it arrived at Newcastle, the
junction of the two roads would have been made nearly five hun-
dred miles further east than it was.

It is needless to describe what the financial condition of the
Central Pacific would have been under such circumstances, or how
much better able it would have found itself to respond to the
demand of the Government now made, which it did not anticipate
when it accepted the terms of the Act of 1862.

But this contest with the State and County authorities was not

limited, as we have seen, to a mere deprivation of money to the
amount lost in the compromise, but, in addition to the evils of the
delay, it had the effect of raising a danger signal to all who might,
under other circumstances, have subscribed to the stock of the
Central Pacific Railroad Company, or aided in its work of con-
struction.

Not only the capitalists of California, but those of New- York,.
Philadelphia and Boston, the last being most prominent at that
time in aiding the railroads, reasoned that if the City of San
Francisco, whose citizens and business men were so much
interested in the success of the construction of the Central
Pacific Railroad, and whose future prosperity would be so much
controlled by it, were not willing to subscribe to its stock, and
would rather pay a forfeit of four hundred thousand dollars than,
by the payment of two hundred thousand dollars more, becoming
the owner of six hundred thousand dollars worth of stock, subject
to the liabilities created by the Constitution and laws of Calif orniar
and to the future exigencies and engagements of the Company,
it was sufficient warning for others not so interested to avoid
subjecting themselves to the perils of stockholders in the corpo-
ration.

As a part of the history of the Central Pacific enterprise it will
be well to note here the language used by the Legislature of Cali-
fornia when, on April 4th, 1864, it passed an Act guaranteeing
the interest on 1,500 bonds of the Central Pacific :

Whereas war now exists, and is in immediate and vigorous prosecution
between the Government of the United States and certain States which have
rebelled against its authority ; and whereas the Congress of the United States
has for military and other purposes granted aid for the construction of the Cen-
tral Pacific Railroad, which aid is insufficient to complete the work as speed-
ily as is necessary ; and whereas it is important, in view of the present state
of war and the further (future) danger thereof, that the said railroad be con-
structed as soon as possible to repel invasion, suppress insurrection and
defend the State against its enemies, therefore the people of the State of
California, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows, etc., etc.

III.

Change of Contract by. the Act of Congress of 1864.

The Union Pacific found itself unable to construct any portion
of its road under the Act of 1862, and did not commence build-
ing until some time in the spring of 1865, and in that year
completed forty miles. It numbered among its corporators
the most wealthy men of the nation, but the terms offered by
the Act of 1862 were not^ sufficiently inviting. The Central
Pacific, although attempting to comply with the Act of 1862,
found that in the tone and temper of capitalists it was impossible
to build their road even with the aid as therein granted ; and,
therefore, their contract was|changed by the passage of the Act of
1864, which permitted the Railroad Companies to issue their first
mortgage bonds on the respective railroad and telegraph lines to
an amount not exceeding the"amount of the bonds to be issued by
the United States, and of even tenor, date, time of maturity, rate
and character of interest, and that the lien of the United States
bonds should be subordinate to that of the bonds of said Com-
panies authorized to be issued on their respective roads, property
and equipments, except as to that provision of the Act of 1862,
relating to the transmission of dispatches and. the transportation
of mails, troops, munitions of war, supplies and public stores for
the Government of the United States y and that the aid provided
to be granted by the Act of 1862, should be given upon the
completion of twenty consecutive miles instead of forty, and that
the Government should retain only one-half of the compensation
for services rendered to it by the Company to be applied in pay-
ment of the bonds issued instead of the whole ; and that the
Central Pacific should^be/jrequired to complete only twenty miles
in one year in place of fifty.

With this increased aid, and the improved credit of its pro-
moters, the Central Pacific was enabled to move out from New-
castle, eastward, and to build its road to Promontory Point, where
it made a connection with the Union Pacific, on May 10th, 1869,
nearly seven years and two months less than the time provided in
the contract.

IV.

The Difficulty of Construction and the Great Cost of
the Central Pacific Road.

The manner in which this construction was performed, the
difficulty of its performance over and through the Sierra Nevada
Mountains, the obstacles encountered in its construction in the
winter months, the great cost of the work, the difficulty of ob-
taining supplies of men and machinery, and of water on the
desert lands in Nevada, is graphically told in the evidence
of Mr. Stanford, the President of the road, Mr. J. H. Stro-
bridge, the Superintendent of Construction, Mr. Arthur Brown,
the Superintendent of Bridges and Buildings, Mr. L. M. Clement,
the Assistant Chief Engineer in charge of the work, and of Mr.
Alfred E. Davis — all of which was taken before the United States
Pacific Railway Commission at San Francisco.

For convenience and by way of illustration we copy here a
portion of the testimony of these witnesses.

Mr. L. M. Clement, the engineer in charge of the work, said,
in a sworn statement :

At the beginning of the construction, the Company, knowing the political
and commercial necessities demanding the rapid completion of the railroad,
determined that nothing which was in their power to prevent should for a
single day arrest its progress. With this determination in view, all ener-
gies were bent, notwithstanding the physical obstacles and financial difficul-
ties to be overcome.

The financial difficulties were not lessened by the opinions then prevailing
to the effect that the obstacles were insurmountable, that the railroads then
constructed were bagatelles as compared with the difficulties to be met in
constructing the Central Pacific Railroad ; that not only was it impossible to
construct a railroad across the Sierras via Donner Pass, but owing to the
great depth of snow, it would be impracticable to operate, and, if built, must
be closed to traffic in the winter months.

As the Company was confined to the use of American rails, the prices
raised 80 per cent., from 41 to 76 dollars per ton. The average prices dur-
ing the building of the road were $91.70 per ton at the Eastern rolling mills.
The rails had to be transported to San Francisco via Cape Horn or the
Isthmus, thence by schooners to Sacramento, the initial point of the road.
Shipments via Panama as late as the year 1868 cost for transportation $51.97
per ton, making the cost at Sacramento $143.67, not including the cost of

transfer from San Francisco. Delays and the losses of ships made it neces-
sary to use the Isthmus route, and for locomotives transported by that route
the Company paid as freight as high as $8,100 for one locomotive. On a
shipment of 18 locomotives the transportation charges were $84,866.80, or
$4,692.50 each. The Company paid for two engines $70,752. The payment
was necessary to avoid delay. The first ten engines purchased cost upwards
of $190,000, the second ten upwards of $215,000. The demand for power
was great to overcome the high mountain gradients. Labor shared in the
advance in prices. California's laborers were mostly miners accustomed to
work in placer mines, which was more to their liking than the discipline of
railroad work. They were indifferent, independent, and the excitement of
the discovery of the Comstock lode was upon them, where any able bodied
man commanded four or more dollars per diem. There was not sufficient
labor then on the Pacific Coast to construct the Central Pacific, and such as
could be obtained could not be depended on. The first mining excitement
meant the complete stampede of every man and the abandonment of the
work.

Each day brought up propositions which must be solved without delay,
so that the construction might advance.

As the snow line was reached, the depth of snow increased towards the
summit, from a few inches to over fifteen feet on a level from actual meas-
urement. The ground was kept bare for the graders by shovelling ; upwards
of one-half of the labor of the entire grading force being expended in remov-
ing snow. Not only was this necessary, but to make excavations, the space
to be occupied by the embankments was cleared and kept clear of snow ;
otherwise the melting of the snow under the broad bases of the high em-
bankments would have caused serious settlements, which, on ascending
gradients, already of 105 and 116 feet per mile, would, in cases, increase the
gradient beyond the tractive power of the engine. It required an army of
men to clear away and keep clear after a storm for a small gang of graders.
Rock cutting could not be carried on under snow drifts, varying in depth
from 20 to 100 feet. It was decided, no matter what the cost, that the
remaining tunnels should be bored during the winter. To reach the faces
of the tunnels, the snow drifts were tunneled, and through these all rock
was removed.

Retaining walls in the canons were built in domes excavated in the snow,
the wall stones raised or lowered to their places in the dome through a shaft
in the snow. All the force, numbering thousands, could not be worked in
the tunnels and in the retaining walls ; the surplus men, with their tools,
luggage, &c. , were hauled beyond the summit, skipping the line now covered
with deep snow, and active work begun in the canons of the Truckee River.
That no delay, even here, should result from the unfinished gap, twenty
miles of rails with their fastenings, a locomotive and cars sufficient for work-
ing were, by oxen and horses, hauled over the summit and down into the
cafion of the Truckee River.

It was deemed wise to do some of the work in the lower mountains crossed
by the railroad in Utah, so that when the track reached those points there

should be no delay. About one car load of tools and material was wagoned
from Wadsworth to the Promontory Mountains, at a cost of $5,400. Every-
thing was expensive ; barley and oats ranged from $200 to $280 per ton ;
bay, $120 ; all otber supplies in Utah in the same ratio.

Along the Humboldt River much of the line was constructed during the
winter ; earthy material that could ordinarily be excavated by the pick and
shovel, were frozen to such a depth as to require blasting. This frozen
material made expensive embankments, requiring constant attention when
the frost was leaving it, to maintain the roadway in condition for the trans-
portation of material to the front.

As early as it was possible in the following year to again attack the work
in the heavy snow belt region, the forces were returned to the granite cliffs
and canons. This army of men shoveled off snow to gain time ; miles of
line were thus made ready for the drill and powder ; $67,500 worth of
powder in a single month being used, a sum sufficient to construct and equip
three miles of ordinary railroad at the present time.

During the winter months there was constant danger from avalanches,
and many laborers lost their lives.

When possible to reach the threatening combs of great masses of compact
snow leaning over the granite bluffs, they were removed by powder.

When the forces were concentrated, the progress in the solid granite
ledges was slow but certain. The track was kept close up to the grading
forces, and never lagged when it was possible to provide track material,
power or rolling stock, either by steamships or sailing vessels.

For many days, owing to the hardness of the rock in the vicinity of Cisco,
it seemed impossible to drill into it a sufficient depth for blasting purposes,
shot after shot fired as if from a cannon, perseverance alone conquered.

That was before the powerful explosives were invented, and the many
other improvements made for railroad construction purposes in the last
twenty years.

The Company, at the summit of the Sierras, Donner Pass, manufactured
nitro-glycerine, but it was too dangerous for general use.

Transportation of material, tools, etc., was then an important factor in
construction. There were then no such powerful engines as of the present
day, which can haul two of the then most powerful ones and their loads ; no
cars to carry 50,000 pounds of load.

All material for construction, excepting timber, had to come from the
Atlantic States, ma the Isthmus or Cape Horn to San Francisco, there light-
ered for ascending the Sacramento River to Sacramento, and thence hauled
over the Central Pacific so far as completed, and, when needed, wagoned
beyond the end of the track. Trains returned empty. There was not one
inhabitant to ten miles between the east crossing of the Truckee River and
Bear River in Utah.

With the exception of a few cords of stunted pine and juniper trees, all
the fuel was hauled from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Not a coal bed on
the line of the Central was then known, and the only one yet discovered is
a poor quality of brown lignite.

Water was scarce after leaving the Truckee and Humboldt Rivers, and
during the entire construction was hauled for steam and general use of the
grading forces.

Thousands of dollars were expended in well boring. Tunnels were bored
into the mountains east of Wadsworth to develop small springs, and when
water was found it was carefully protected, so very precious was it, and
conveyed in some cases over eight miles in pipes to the line of the road.

There was not a tree that would make a board on over five hundred miles
of the route, nor satisfactory quality of building stone. The country afforded
nothing entering into the construction of the superstructure of a railroad
which could be made available.

lie maximum haul for ties was 600 miles, and of rails and other ma-
terials and supplies the entire length of the Central Pacific Railroad, or 740
miles.

Cars were transported on ships, in pieces, to San Francisco, and lightered
for Sacramento, and there put together.

California had no means of manufacturing for railroad building. Only 14
years prior to the beginning of the construction of this railroad was there any
considerable emigration directed to this coast.

A quarter of a century has made great changes. Once the possibility of
constructing a railroad across the mountain ranges and deserts proven, and
emigration started west, capital was less timid of the probable future of
railroad enterprise, and means were furnished for constructing other trans-
continental roads ; and by the aid of machinery, powerful explosives, and
experience, they can now be constructed at comparatively light cost. It is
probable, that had the road been constructed during the five years preceding,
it would not have cost more than 66 per cent, of what it actually did cost.

The principal elements, materials, transportation and labor, were very
much cheaper. Eails averaged 51 per cent, less ; transportation, 63 per cent,
less. All elements excepting labor was a large per centage less.

If constructed five years subsequent, it would have cost about 75 per cent,
of the actual cost. Had the whole time allowed for construction of the
Central Pacific Railroad been used, it is not an easy problem to determine
for how much less the road could have been built. Advantage of the
markets could then have been taken, contractors would have been willing to
undertake the work, if a reasonable time for completion were allowed, so
that they would not be required to perform any of the work during the
winter months, where mercury freezes, and in deep snows ; in fact, all the
advantages of seven additional years.

Mr. Strobridge, the Superintendent of Construction, stated on
oath :

The work was pushed with the utmost vigor; all the men were hired that
could be found, and no effort or expense was spared to complete the road as
quickly as possible. In this way it was finished and in operation from Sac-

ramento California, to Ogdei., Utah, about seven years sooner than was
required by Act of Congress.

Very high prices were paid for powder, and all tools and supplies used on
the work, and nothing was spared that would hasten its completion ; and
the work was pushed regardless of the season.

The winter of 1865-66 was a very wet one, making the roads on the clay
soils of the foothills nearly impassable for vehicles. Large numbers of pack
animals had to be brought into use, and on them were carried nearly all
supplies, even hay and grain, over steep mountain trails to the construction
camps.

As illustrating the impassability of the roads, the stage running from end
of track to Virginia City was stuck in the mud, and left standing in the
street at Gold Run for six weeks, the passengers being carried in the mean-
time by saddle train, from the railroad at Colfax to Dutch Flat.

The building of the railroad during this time was prosecuted with energy,
but at much greater cost than would have been in the dry season. During
the winter of 1866-7 and also of 1867-8, there were unusually heavy snow-
falls in the upper Sierra Nevada, where the road was then under construc-
tion.

In many instances our camps were carried away by snow slides and men
were buried, and many of them were not found until the snow melted the
next summer.

In the spring of each year the men were taken back from the Truckee
into the mountains, and an average depth of ten or twelve feet of snow was
cleared away before grading could be commenced. The total snow fall of
the season was about forty feet ; and the depth of hard, settled snow in mid-
winter was eighteen feet on a level in Summit Valley and Donner Pass ;
over which we hauled on sleds, track material for forty miles of railroad,
three locomotives and forty cars, from Cisco to Donner Lake, where all was
reloaded on wagons and hauled over miry roads to Truckee, a total distance
of twenty-eight miles, at enormous cost. In this way the road was forced to
the east slope of the Sierra Nevadas.

In crossing the deserts east of the Truckee River, water for men and ani-
mals was hauled at times forty miles. It was necessary to have the heavy
work in the Palisade Canon done in advance of the main force ; and 3,000
men with 400 horses and carts were sent to that point, a distance of 300 miles in
advance of the track. Hay, grain and all supplies for these men and horses
had to be hauled by teams over the deserts for that great distance, there
being no supplies to be obtainad on the entire route.

The winter of 1868-69 was one of severe cold. The construction was in
progress in the upper Humboldt Valley, where the ground was often frozen
to a depth of two and three feet, and material required blasting and treat-
ment like rock, which could have been cheaply moved in a more favorable
time.

The entire cost of the railroad, had it been built with less speed, and as
such railroads are usually constructed, would have been fully seventy per
cent, less than its actual cost, as it was built with rapidity of construction

the main consideration, and without regard to any outlay that could hasten
its completion.

The railroad from Newcastle, on the west slope of the Sierras, to Wads-
worth, at the beginning of the Nevada deserts, 157 miles, was built between
February, 1865, and July, 1868, more than three years, with a force averag-
ing 11,000, and at times reaching 13,000 men.

The railroad from Wadsworth to Ogden, about 555 miles, was built between
July, 1868, and May, 1869, about ten months, with a force averaging 5,000
men. If the country between Newcastle and Wadsworth had been of the
same average difficulty as that between Wadsworth and Ogden and between
Ogden and Omaha, the labor that was put upon the Central Pacific Railroad
would have built it to a point far east of Omaha in the same time, the work
from the east slope of the Sierra Nevadas to Ogden being more than an ave-
rage of that from Ogden to Omaha.

Mr. Arthur Brown, Superintendent of Bridges and Build-
ings, set forth in his affidavit :

I submit a brief outline of the construction of the snow sheds over the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, on the line of the Central Pacific Railroad, as
well as the conditions which made them a necessity. As Superintendent of
Bridges and Buildings, that work was assigned to myself. The excessive
snow belt, where the road crosses the Sierra Nevada Mountains, extends
from a point near Blue Cafion, on the western slope, to Cold Stream Canon,
on the east, a distance of about forty miles, having its maximum depth near
the summit. The snow fall for the season has been known from actual
measurement to be nearly fifty feet. In the fall of 1866 the road was
opened to Cisco. The experience in keeping the road open through the
following winter, led to the construction of the snow sheds. Although every
known appliance was used to keep the road clear from snow that winter,
including the largest and best snow plows then known, it was found impos-
sible to keep it open over one-half of the time, and that mostly by means of
men and shovels, which required an army of men on hand all the time at
great expense. It was decided, after various discussions by the Directors,
that the only positive means of protecting the road was by means of snow
sheds and galleries, although the expense of building a shed nearly forty
miles in length was appalling, and unprecedented as an extra in railroad con-
struction. In the summer of 1867 we built some experimental sheds. The
snow shed building was commenced in earnest in the spring of 1868. Owing
to the short season in which the work had to be done (less than five months)
it was decided to cover all the cuts, and the points where the road crossed
the great avalanches beyond the summit, with the idea that the high em-
bankment on the road could be kept clear of snow. As the road was then
rapidly progressing up the Valley of the Humboldt, it became a matter of
the most vital importance that the sheds should be so far finished that the
supplies and building materials for construction ahead should not be inter-
rupted, as the connection was to be made in the spring of 1868. We, tbere-

fore, had to gather men from all quarters and pay high wages : carpenters,
$4.00 per day ; and suitable laborers about $2.50 to $3.00. We employed
about 2,500 men, with six trains with locomotives distributing material.

The expense was considerably increased by the fact, that we had to keep
the road clear for traffic, which was great, owing to the large amount of
building material forwarded to the front, and to avoid accident, which
consumed about 30 per cent, of the time, consequently increasing the cost in
that proportion. Besides, we had, by commencing in the spring, to shovel from
six to eight feet of snow before we could put in foundations for sheds. In
the fall we continued until snow stopped us entirely, although we had been
shoveling snow for nearly two months. The expense of shoveling snow,
and the difficulty of getting men at reasonable wages to remain on the work,
owing to the snow, bad weather, &c, added very much to the cost. As there
were not sufficient saw mills to supply the necessary material, we had to
resort to round and hewn timber, which had to be got from the woods and
brought to the track at great expense. The galleries are built along the side
of the mountains, where the slope of the roof conforms with that of the
mountains, so the snow can pass over easily. Some of these galleries run
back on the slope of the mountains several hundred feet from the centre line
of the road. In other places massive masonry walls were built across ravines
to prevent the snow from striking the sheds at right angles. The snow
sheds and galleries were finished in the fall of 1869. In them was used
65,000,000 feet, B. M., of timber, and 900 tons of bolts, spikes, &c. The
total length of sheds and galleries, when finished, was about 37 miles, but
there were several pieces built afterwards, bringing it up to nearly forty
miles, at a cost of about $1,500,000. For several years the loss from fires
was considerable, as several miles were burned down, and had to be rebuilt.
Water trains are now constantly kept on hand for sprinkling down the sheds
twice a week, thus preventing their destruction by fire. A number of the
tunnels through the same mountains had to be timbered at a great expense.
As most of it had to be got out in the winter time, and as it was impossible
to keep the roads open, we had to employ men and bring timber to the
tunnels on hand sleds.

1 am quite familiar with all the extraordinary exertions put forth in all
departments of this work, and especially the almost superhuman efforts put
forth by Mr. Strobridge, Superintendent of Construction, in keeping the men
at work on the rock work and tunnels, and shoveling snow at great depth
during the fall and winter.

I consider, from my experience, that, if time could have been spared to
take advantage of the proper seasons, it could probably be duplicated now
for less than forty per cent, of its original cost.

In the very able report on Trans-continental Railways, hereto-
fore noticed, made by Col. O. M. Poe, of the Engineers' Corps,
to General Sherman, he says of the construction of the Central
and Union Pacific :

Literally an army of workmen were employed — 25,000 men and 6,000
teams — and the route presented a busy scene. The woods rang with the
strokes of the axe and the quarries with the click of steel. The streams
were bordered with lumbermen's camps and choked with floating logs, and
materials, supplies and equipment for the Central Pacific were scattered from
New- York, via Cape Horn and San Francisco, to the very end of the track
advancing eastward.

Without undertaking in any way to detract from or underrate
the services performed by the Union Pacific in the accomplish-
ment of its contract, it will be remembered that the Central
Pacific labored under great disadvantages which were not shared
by the Union Pacific, and that the work of its construction
Avas much more costly. At the time that the Union Pacific had
reached the one hundredth mile post, west of Omaha, it was in
direct railway communication with the rail mills and manufac-
tories of the Eastern States. Before that time its supplies were
shipped by rail from Chicago to Saint Joseph, and thence by the
Missouri River to Omaha. It could obtain its supplies daily, if it
Avished, and in such quantities as it desired. But the Central Pacific
Avas separated by two oceans, and twenty thousand miles, from
the source of the materials required for the construction of its
road. It could not predict, within two months of the time, when
the rails it had ordered from the Eastern rolling mills would
reach the western end of its track ; and in addition, it was sub-
jected in the receipt of its supplies to the chances of shipwreck,
of vessels putting into way ports on the South Atlantic or South
Pacific for repairs. Its work of construction was attended Avith
drawbacks and disappointments, and great expenses that were
not shared by the Union Pacific Company. It had to pay war
rates of insurance, ranging from five to seventeen per cent., from
which tax the Union Pacific was free. And when pressed for
time, or to remedy a loss of material that had occurred in the
transit around Cape Horn from New-York, it was compelled to
send rails or locomotives across the isthmus of Panama. It was
subjected to burdens from which the Union Pacific was totally
free, as is shown by the testimony of Mr. Clement, Mr. Stro-
bridge and Mr. Brown, heretofore noticed.

Being at such a distance from its base of supplies, it was com-
pelled to keep material for nearly a year's construction constantly
in transit. It had upon the ocean for the greater part of the

time it was engaged in the construction of its road, materials
valued at from one to three millions of dollars, upon which
it was incurring an interest account, ranging for most of the time
from twelve to fifteen per cent, per annum. We have it in evi-
dence before the Commission, that the rails used in this work cost
at the point of production from $74 to $115 in cash per ton. 500
tons were purchased at $262 in Central Pacific stock, with $5 addi-
tional added for delivery in New- York or Boston ; and that the ave-
rage price paid in New- Y~ork during the entire work was $80 a ton.
The freight from New- York to San Francisco, around Cape Horn,
averaged $17.50 per ton ; insurance was from five and a half to
seventeen per cent. It will therefore be seen, that the cost to the
Central Pacific of rails in San Francisco, at the lowest rate of insur-
ance, without interest, was $101.50 per ton. To this must be joined
the cost of transportation from San Francisco to the western end
of the Central Pacific, which averaged two dollars per ton ; and
the cost of moving to the point of construction being added,
makes it entirely safe to calculate that the average cost of the
rails used on the Central Pacific was not less than $125 per ton
laid in the track.

These enormous prices and expenses, added to the general
character of the country through which the Central Pacific was
built, and the difficulty of obtaining fuel, and the long distance
over which water was transported for the use of the engines en-
gaged in construction and of men employed, is one of the reasons
why, joined to others discussed hereafter, this Company exhausted
the proceeds of all the aid granted to it in bonds by the United
States, and such portion of the lands as it had sold at the com-
pletion of the road to Promontory, and the proceeds of the first
mortgage bonds which it had issued, and all the aid which it
received from the counties of California, and the proceeds of its
bonds, the interest on which for twenty years was guaranteed hy
the State of California, and the moneys received from the sale
of the stock of the Central Pacific, in the construction and equip-
ment of the aided road between Sacramento and Promontory
Point, and the purchase from the Union Pacific of the road
between Promontory and Ogden, so as to comply with the Act
of Congress, that the common terminus and point of junction
should be fixed at Ogden, and that at the completion of such

construction and purchase it was several millions of dollars in
debt.

The charge, so often made, that the promoters of the Central
Pacific made great profits in the construction of the road, is
utterly refuted. When it was finished they could not -have
paid their debts from the assets then remaining. The Secretary
of the Company has shown the faithful expenditure of every
dollar received prior to the completion of the road — that it was
all consumed in construction and equipment.

No one who reads the evidence given before the United States
Pacific Railway Commission will deny that the promoters of
the Central Pacific enterprise labored earnestly and manfully
not only to fulfill their contract with the Government, but to
comply with its wishes for an earlier completion of the road; and
they did it without regard to their own pecuniary advantage, be-
lieving that the Government would treat them equitably in the
premises.

The Government and the people were very anxious for the
fruition of the scheme that had so long held a prominent place in
the public mind. The early events of the war had shown the
peril of not having frequent and rapid communication between
the Atlantic and Pacific States ; and the Companies having the
work in charge did all that lay in their power to gratify the pop-
ular desire for its early completion, without regard to the cost to
themselves.

Before the roads were fully finished the Government com-
menced to realize benefits from the partial fulfillment of the con-
tract, in its facilities for transportation of mails, and of troops and
munitions of war to its various forts, and by its opportunity of
communicating with the commanding officers by telegraph.

These benefits and advantages to the Government increased
with the further progress of the road, until it was finished.

When the Union and Central Pacific connected their tracks
they had performed all their part of the contract to the best of
their ability. They had accomplished the great work that had
filled so large a space in the public thought ; and they put the
easements and facilities which their lines afforded at the disposi-
tion of the Government, to the great advantage of the nation,
and the protection of its territory.

The "glad tidings" that were telegraphed from Promontory by
4

the Presidents of these two Companies, on the 10th day of May,
1869, to the victorious General of our Armies, at that time Presi-
dent of the United States —

We have performed our contract with the Government, and there is now
continuous connection by rail from the Missouri River to the Sacramento,
and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific —

was second only in its importance to the pregnant message sent
from Appomatox by this same gallant soldier to President Lincoln,
when the unity of the nation was assured by the surrender of
General Lee and his army.

They had done the work that was given them to do ; and in
spite of all criticism to the contrary, they had done it well.
But from that moment, when the Government was notified of
the performance of the contract, when the advantages so hope-
fully anticipated by the Senators and Representatives who voted
for the passage of the Act of 1862, and the amendment of 1864,
were at the disposition of the Government, it commenced to dis-
regard all its obligations under the contract, and to lay its heavy
hand on the corporations who had accomplished this great na-
tional work. p

This is a statement that can only be made with shame and
mortification by a citizen respecting his Government ; but it is
the truth ; and justice in behalf of those whom the Government
is oppressing requires that it should be said.

It is this persistent and willful disregard of all its contract ob-
ligations on the part of the Government in its dealings with the
Central Pacific, that gives this Company the right to come to the
people's representatives assembled in Congress, to make known
its grievances, to present its equities, and to demand appropriate
relief.

As the Central Pacific had been true in all its obligations to
the Government in the construction of its part of the national
hio-hway, so it has continued faithfully to observe all the obliga-
tions it entered into when it filed its acceptance of the terms of
the Acts of 1862 and of 1864.

In July, 1864, on the very day the contract between the Govern-
ment and the Union and Central Pacific was amended, Congress
passed an Act subsidizing the Northern Pacific Road, the effect of
which was necessarily to take from the Central Pacific the busi-

ness north of California. And in July, 1866, while the construc-
tors of the Central Pacific were bending all their energies, as we
have heretofore shown, and seeking every aid within human reach
to tunnel the rocks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to remove the
masses of compact snow, to cut down the timber and clear a suitable
bed for their rails, the Government subsidized still another road, the
Southern Pacific, the building of which could only result in taking
away from the Central a large portion of the ti'ans-continental traffic
intended for California, and which the construction of the Union
and Central was intended to control, and to compel the Central
Pacific, for its own protection, to purchase it, and to limit its
ability to respond to the demands of the Government, and to de-
crease the amount of the net earnings which, under its contract,
it was obligated to render to the Government.

It will not, of course, be contended that if Congress, acting for
the best interests of the nation, thought it wise to subsidize these
roads, it should have refrained, because of the contract it had
made with the Central and Union Pacific ; but its action in this
respect certainly does raise many equitable considerations, which
should be considered and determined in the settlement of the
questions now existing between it and the corporations.

And such would appear to be the view adopted by Congress
in the passage of the Act of March 3, 1887, authorizing the ap-
pointment of a Commission to investigate the books, accounts
and methods of railroads which have received aid from the United
States, and directing the Commissioners —

To inquire if the United States, since the Union and Central Pacific Railroad
Companies accepted the terms proposed by Congress for the construction of
the Pacific Railroads, has granted aid in lands for building competing parallel
railroads, and if so, how many said roads, and to what extent such compet-
ing lines have impaired the earning capacity of the Pacific Railroads.

The testimony taken by the Commission to enable it to answer
this inquiry, shows a loss to the Central Pacific from 1881 to 1886
of about $1 7,000,000. We will refer to this testimony hereafter.

The people of the United States have benefited by the com-
petitive rates from which this loss resulted. The profits of the
Central Pacific on its through traffic have been almost totally
destroyed, and its ability to meet its pecuniary engagements to
the Government greatly lessened. The action of the Government

in creating these factors to share the overland business must be
considered a violation of the contract of 1862, made in the public
interest, for which the Central Pacific is entitled to compensation,
commensurate with the damage.

An impartial judgment on the acts and motives of the men
who constructed the Central Pacific is difficult to be obtained
from those who were not familiar with the peculiar trials, draw-
backs and hardships to which they were subjected during the
term of such construction.

After the lapse of time we are apt to underrate the obstacles
that attended an effort successfully accomplished.

Even seven years after the road was completed, the embarrass-
ments of its constructors had partially faded from the public
mind, as we learn from the following extract from the letter of
Mr. Huntington, dated April 3, 18 76, to Senator Edmunds, which
was printed by order of the Senate :

The relations between the Government and the Pacific Railroad Compa-
nies, growing out of the Acts of 1862 and 1864, whereby the United States,
in time of war, advanced its bonds, in order to insure and hasten the con-
struction of a railroad and telegraph line between certain points on the Mis-
souri River and the Pacific Ocean, and especially the pecuniary obligations
created thereby, have again been pressed upon the attention of Congress and
of your Committee.

The spirit and aim of those Acts, it is well known, was to establish, with-
out the direct agency of the nation, railroad communication across the Con-
tinent, and this object has been attained under the terms and conditions then
made, but years ahead of the allotted time. Commonplace as the achievement
may seem now, at the time of its inception it was deemed a work so novel, so
bold and vast, that but few believed in its success, while there was a general
apprehension,, both in the public mind and among their representatives, that it
might be long delayed or fail altogether.

A Committee room in the Capitol, or the Chamber of either
branch of Congress, is not conducive to a just decision of any
controversy between the Central Pacific and the Government. It
should have been heard on the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the
winters of 1865-66, 1866-67, or 1867-68, during the times when,
according to the testimony of Civil Engineer Clement, Construc-
tor Strobridge, and Bridge-builder Bi-own, it seemed that the
efforts of man to construct a track over these mountains was
apparently being successfully resisted by the determined force of
the elements.

The physical and financial energy and ability so auspiciously
displayed to overcome the impediments encountered, can scarcely
be well considered or determined under the dome of the Capitol.

Observance by the Central Pacific op its Obligations to
the Government.

But it is now said that the Central Pacific Railroad Company
has not been mindful of the obligations imposed upon it by the
laws of the United States under which it received aid for the
construction of its road.

It will be difficult certainly for the most avowed enemy of this
Company to substantiate the proposition.

In what have its managers failed ? They constructed their road,
as we have heretofore shown, without any regard to their ultimate
profit. They constructed it as if they were performing a national
instead of a private work, and were more anxious for the interests
of the nation than their own.

No matter what a thing cost, no matter what amount
could be saved by delay, they pushed along, in season and
out of season, (as the testimony before the Commission shows,)
to insure the final completion of the work, and to open it for the
public use as soon as human aid could render it possible.

If they had kept to the rigid terms of their contract, and had
opened the road, as its letter required them to do, on the first
day of July, 1876, instead of on the 10th of May, 1869 ; if they
had availed themselves of their opportunities of buying in the
cheapest market at a favorable time, instead of exhausting all
their resources, as they did, and when the first through train was
run over the road, owing a debt they could not have met
if they had been pressed to pay it, they would, out of the sum of
more than fifty millions in gold which they expended in the con-
struction of the road from San Jose to Promontory, have saved
at least twenty millions.

Is there any evidence in this of their being unmindful of their
obligations to the Government ? They sacrificed the immense
sum they might have saved to show the practicability of

the work which had received the assent of Congress, and to
demonstrate that, contrary to the opinions of the most able en-
gineers of England, France, Germany and Austria, they were
enabled to do their part in the construction of a road over the
Sierra Nevada Mountains, and over the desert lands between
those mountains and the Missouri River in an incredibly short
space of time, and to successfully operate the same to the ad-
vantage of the public, the benefit of the nation, and to render
it a commercial success.

It may be that those who read this statement will remember
the criticisms of the leading London journals, that no other
people but those of the United States would ever have conceived
of so wild a project as the building of a road to connect the
frontier of the Atlantic States with the Pacific Ocean ; and here
it may be said, that their success in showing the practicability
of a road over and through the mountain passes and the
desert lands in one-half of the territory of the United States, was
of much greater benefit and advantage to the nation than all the
aid which the Government rendered to them. The result of their
efforts is shown in there being five trans-continental roads in
successful operation at the present time.

In what other respect have these Companies failed in their
obligations to the Government ?

Have not the United States all that they bargained for ?

It was avowed in the debates prior to the passage of the bill
of 1862, and declared in the bill itself, that the aid granted to
the Companies was made upon condition —

That the said railroad and telegraph line shall be kept in repair and in use,
and the said Company shall at all times transmit dispatches over said tele-
graph line, and transport mails, troops, munitions of war, supplies and
public stores upon said railroad for the Government, whenever required to
do so by any department thereof ; and that the Government shall, at all
times, have preference in the use of the same for the purposes aforesaid, at
fair and reasonable rates of compensation, not to exceed the amounts paid
by private parties for the same kind of service.

Has not the Government the benefit of this condition to the
fullest extent whenever it chooses to use the railroad, instead of
seeking for a cheaper mode of transit around Cape Horn or over
the Isthmus of Panama ? Has there been any failure of the
Company in its obligations in this respect ?

The purpose stated in the title of the bill is,

To secure to the Government the use of the same for postal, military and
other purposes.

The road and all its equipment has been at all times open to
the use of the Government whenever its sense of economy would
enable it to pay the same rates as were paid by private citizens
for the same services, instead of sending its business around Cape
Horn, or through foreign countries, in defiance of the terms
of its contract with the Company.

It stipulated for the payment of five per cent, from the time
of the completion of the road. When the last section of the
road was provisionally accepted by the Government this debt
ridden corporation, the Central Pacific, asked for the bonds and
lands that were due to it in accordance with the terms of the
contract. The answer was, No. Your road is not completed.
We have a report of the Board of Civil Engineers that we
have appointed, who say you must spend nearly five millions
of dollars to finish the road in the manner we require ;
and until it is so completed you cannot have the balance
of the aid that is promised ; and in addition to that we
insist, as security that the road will be completed to the entire
satisfaction of the Government, that you deposit with the Secre-
tary of the Treasury four millions of your first mortgage bonds,
and we will retain, in addition, as further security, all the
lands which you are entitled to under the Act of 1864. But,
nevertheless, in the meantime, although your road is not com-
pleted so as to entitle you to payment, you must still render to
us five per cent, on the net earnings from the time that you run
the first train over the road, from the time we have the full use
of it in every respect.

The Central and Union Pacific demurred to this arrangement.
But when the Supreme Court of the United States, differing as
it did from the views expressed by the Court of Claims, and by
the Circuit Court for the Northern District of California, re-
versed the judgment, and held that the United States was techni-
cally correct, and could, if it chose, persist in its inequitable de-
mand, the Central Pacific at once obeyed the law and paid to the
Government the amount which it claimed as five per cent, upon
the net earnings from the time the last spike was driven.

And so when the contract was changed by the passage of the
so-called Thurman Act, which the Central Pacific believed violated
every principle of the law of contracts, it being advised and believ-
ing that the alteration of the original contract by the legislative
department was beyond its authority, and that the Act was in-
valid, submitted the matter to the Courts, and when, against what
might be said to have been the indignant protest of Mr. Jus-
tice Strong, Mr. Justice Bradley and Mr. Justice Field, the
Court sustained the validity of the Act ; the Central Pacific
complied with it, and is still complying with it, although
to the great detriment of the corporation and the Government,
whose anticipations of benefit have not been realized, because the
change was not based on sound principles.

Where is the evidence that the Central Pacific corporation has
not kept its part of the contract, or that it has in any way failed
to comply with any of its obligations to the Government ? It has
rendered to the Government all that was demanded in the con-
tract, the building of the road, and in about one-half the time
that the law allotted.

Whenever the rights of the United States have been ascer-
tained, the Central Pacific has accorded those rights, and has
cheerfully and promptly yielded to the demands of the Treasury
upon it.

It is the merest perversion of language to say that this Com-
pany has in any way failed in its obligations towards the Govern-
ment.

But while there is no evidence to sustain such a charge against
the Central Pacific Railroad Company or its officers, we find
abundant evidence in the Executive departments of the Govern-
ment to refute it.

The Attorney-General, in his report to the Senate at the first
session of the 48th Congress, said :

First. The Central Pacific Railroad Company lias fully and promptly com-
plied with the requirements of said Act. (Meaning the Act of Congress
generally known as the Thurman Act.) (See Ex. Doc. No. 121, p. 2.)

At the same session, in answer to further inquiry, the Attorney-
General said :

In further reply to the inquiry of the Senate, I have the honor to state

that I am informed by the Secretary of the Interior that the Central Pacific
has met and paid the demands of the Commissioners of Railroads, reserving
all its rights. (Ex. Doc. 124, p. 3.)

William H. Armstrong, United States Commissioner of Rail-
roads, in his report for T882, says :

Able and expert accountants of this office have investigated and reported
upon the business, financial condition, and the proportion of net earnings
due to the Government for the past year. The results are shown in detail
under the proper headings. Free access has been accorded to the books and
accounts of the several subsidized roads whenever requested. Detailed
statements of the earnings and expenses, financial condition and physical
character of the various land grant roads have been compiled from examina-
tion of the returns made, and are herewith submitted. As a rule, the ac-
counts of the road are kept in a thoroughly comprehensive and business-like
manner. (Report of 1882, p. 5.)

Again, he says :

Under the Act of May 7, 1878, the bookkeeper of this office checked the
books and accounts of the Company (The Central Pacific Railroad Company)
in San Francisco, with a view to the ascertainment of the twenty-five per
cent, of the net earnings for the year ending, December 31, 1881. Twenty-
five per cent, of the net earnings of the subsidized portion of the road was
found to amount to $1,038,935.24. The transportation for the Government
during the year amounts to $959,785.33, leaving a balance due the United
States of $79,149.91. A statement was rendered, and payment demanded
October 20, 1882. A check for the amount was sent to the Treasurer of the
United States, by the Vice-President of the Company, October 30, 1882.
The Company has therefore paid to the Government all its accrued indebted-
ness to this date. (Same Report, p. 26.)

The same Commissioner, in his report for the year 1883, says :

In accordance with the Act of May 7, 1878, the books and accounts of this
Company (The Central Pacific Railroad Company) were checked by the
bookkeepers of this Bureau, in San Francisco, California, with a view to the
ascertainment of twenty-five per cent, of the net earnings of that portion of
the road, 860.66 miles, subsidized with the bonds of the United States, for
the year ending December 31, 1882. The amount found due was $792,920.24 ;
against which the Company have performed transportation services on aided
and non-aided lines, all of which have been retained by the Government,
amounting to $1,051,862.46, leaving a balance due the Company that year of
$258,942.22. The Central Pacific Railroad Company has promptly paid all
balances found to be due to the United States, after statements have been
rendered by this office. (Report of 1883, p. 42.)

The same Commissioner, in his report for 1884, says :

The property and accounts of the several railroads have been examined.
The Companies (the Pacific Railroad Companies) have freely accorded all
proper facilities for the inspection of their property, and the examination of
their books. (Report of 1884, p. 3.)

General Joseph E. Johnston, Commissioner of Railroads, in
his report for 1885, says :

The lease to the Southern Pacific Company has not affected the obligations
of the Central Pacific Railroad Company to the United States, of course. The
accounts of the Company were examined in San Francisco. * * *

The property of the Company was also examined, and found to be in good
condition. The principal workshops at Sacramento are thoroughly equipped,
and capable of making all the engines required by the whole system. The
service of the road is excellent, ditches ample, road bed well raised, and
bridges sound. (Report of 1885, p. 1.)

And again, in the same report :

The accounts of the Companies, under the supervision of this office, have
been carefully examined, especially those of the Companies that were
aided with the bonds of the United States, and the officers readily furnished
all necessary facilities. The property, including railroad, rolling stock,
workshops, is in good working order. The portion of this road, (the Central
Pacific, between West Oakland and Roseville Junction, 159 miles, was found
to be in the usual good condition, so characteristic of this Company's railroads.
(Report of 1885, pages 3 and 42.)

Theophilus French, United States Auditor of Railroad Accounts,
in his report for 1879, says :

This Company (the Central Pacific Railroad Company) has rendered such
reports as have been required, and submitted its books and accounts for
examination. * * * The engineer's report shows, in considerable detail,
the condition of the property covered by the lien of the United States. * *
* The equipment of the road is in good condition, and ample. *****
The ferry service between Oakland and San Francisco * * * is to be com-
mended. The passenger service on the road is unexceptionably good.
(Auditor's Report, 1879, pages 34 to 37. )

It is in order to refer here to the current testimony of the time
for the impression made, even upon those who were not favorable
to the owners of the Union and Central Pacific Roads, by the
manner in which the managers of those Companies had performed
their contract with the Government.

When the Act of May 7, 1878, was before the Senate, the Act
known as the " Thurman Bill," by which the contracts between
the Government and the Union and Central Pacific Railroad
Companies were changed, without the consent and against the
protest of the contracting parties, who, in reliance on the good
faith of the Government, had built this national highway ; Mr.
Bogy, the Senator from Missouri, who favored this violation of
the rights of the Railroad Companies, was compelled to yield the
following tribute. He said :

Hook upon the building of the railroad from the waters of the Missouri to the
Pacific Ocean, at the time particularly in which it was built, during the war,
as perhaps the greatest achievement of the human race on the earth. I am old
enough to remember when the scheme of a railroad from the waters of the
Missouri to the Pacific Ocean was looked upon as a wild dream, as a thing
nearly impossible, if not entirely impossible of accomplishment. Yet it was
accomplished. And, in truth and in fact, it was accomplished at a compara-
tively small cost to the Government. The lands donated to the road were not
worth a cent without a railroad. The Government had an empire lying west,
between the tcaters of the Missouri and the Pacific Ocean — an empire tohich has
sprung into great States and Territories from that day — a country which has
become of great advantage, and which would have been utterly worthless without
the railroad. It has bound to this portion of the confederacy the Pacific Coast
with bands of iron, and no one can tell what might have been the destiny of that
section during the war, if it had not been for the railroad. * * I give to the
men who originated and carried through this great enterprise all possible credit
for doing a great thing, at the critical moment, in a very short space of time.

That the Company has been more than mindful of its obli-
gation to the Government is proved by its reception to the Com-
missioners appointed under the Act of March 3, 1887. The
President of the Company and its officers were advised, previously
to the arrival of the Commissioners at San Francisco, that they
owed no duty to the Government which was involved in the inspec-
tion of their books and accounts by these Commissioners. They
were then advised by counsel, as has since been determined by the
opinions of Mr. Justice Field and of Judge Sawyer, Circuit Judge
of the United States for the Northern District of California, and
of District Judge Sabin, that they were under no legal obliga-
tions to submit "their books and papers, accounts and methods "
to the inspection of this Commission, or to submit themselves
or their employees to oral examination. But so anxious were they

not to subject themselves to the charge of being wanting in any
obligations to the Government, and being willing that the various
Departments, both executive and legislative, might see that they did
not shrink from any investigation into its affairs, that they have
placed all the records of the aided Companies, and of all others that
they control, within the inspection of the Commissioners and their
large number of experts and accountants, and have answered all
questions, irrespective of the laws and rules of evidence which it
pleased the Commissioners to propound to them, until it came to
the point of exposing their confidential relations with their at-
torneys and agents, the answers to which would not have con-
cerned the Government, or borne in any way upon its pecuniary
interests in the premises, as we will hereafter more fully show.
They have submitted to this demand upon them rather than
be thought to conceal any portion of their affairs from their
creditor.

Senator Stanford, the President of the Central Pacific Railroad
Company, in the testimony given before the Commission says, in
substance, that during his administration as President of the
Central Pacific Railroad Company, from its incorporation to the
present time, there has never been any desire or intention, or any
act done, permitted or suffered, with his knowledge, by which it
has been intended to disregard the rights of the United States as a
contracting party with the Central Pacific, and that in his judg-
ment no such result has obtained from any act done by the Com-
pany which could in the ordinary course of business have been
prevented.

Mr. Miller, Secretary of the Company, who has been connected
with its affairs from 1862, says :

Not in any single instance during my twenty-five years' connection with,
the affairs of the Centra] Pacific has its business been so handled, or its
property managed, with the intent on the part of its directors or officers to
infringe or impair the interests of the United States.

And Mr. Crocker and Mr. Huntington have testified to the same
effect.

We might close our remarks on this branch of the inquiiy at this
point. But it becomes necessary, with reference to determining
the true position between the Government and the Central Pacific,

and the maintenance of those equities which are claimed by the
Company, to examine how far the United States has performed
its part of the contract.

It was certainly no part of its terms that the United States
should subsidize another trans-continental line in 1864, or still
another in 1866.

The effect of this departure from the spirit of the contract we
will notice more fully hereafter. For it necessarily results, that
from the building of those lines, the five per cent, and twenty-five
per cent, of its net earnings which the Central Pacific is required
now to pay annually into the treasury is not sufficient by nearly
half a million to meet the annual interest on the bonds issued by
the Government.

When the Act of 1862 was passed, it was the expectation of
both parties to the contract, that the business which the Govern-
ment would give to the Companies would be sufficient, not only
to discharge the interest upon the bonds, but to create a sinking
fund for the discharge of the principal within twenty years.
And when the amendment to the contract was passed in 1864,
one-half the compensation was to be used, so far as would suffice,
for the same purpose.

It was part of the contract, as formed by the passage of the
Act of 1864, that the Central Pacific should receive in cash one-
half of the compensation for work done for the Government ;
that it should not be required to surrender any portion of its
earnings, other than the five per cent, of the net receipts, until
the maturity of the bonds, if at all.

But from a reading of the Act of 1862, although perhaps it is
somewhat immaterial to state the proposition at this time, the Gov-
ernment never expected to demand any payment from the Company
for the discharge of either principal or interest of the bonds, ex-
cepting the performance of the services described in that Act.
There was not the slightest expectation on the part of either the
Government or the Company that any portion of the earnings of
the Companies would be rendered to the Government, excepting
the compensation for the transportation done for it.

But it would seem, by the evidence taken before the Commis-
sion, that the Government has withheld the transportation,
which, by the Act of 1862, and the Act of 1864, it contracted to
employ the Central and Union Pacific to do.

Disregarding its obligations to those Companies, it has chosen
other routes of transit, often paying more for the service in cash.
As is shown in the evidence of Mr. Gray, the General Freight
Agent, and of Mr. Miller, the Secretary, it has sent the public
stores and supplies around Cape Horn and across the Isthmus of
Panama, and of late a portion of its business between points in
the Atlantic States and points in the Pacific States has been done
for some distance by a foreign corporation, the Canadian Pacific
Railroad.

It is not straining the testimony to say, that the proof shows
that the United States has not of late given any of its transpor-
tation business to the Union or Central Pacific, excepting to local
points on those lines, but has diverted its business to the lines
competing with the Union and Central.

We wish we might stop here with the illustrations of the bad
faith exhibited by the Government to the Central Pacific Railroad
Company. .Not only has the Government refused to perform its
contract, in giving its business of transportation to the Central
Pacific, as that contract required it to do, at the same price that
it paid to other and competing lines, but it has absolutely refused
to send it by the Central Pacific, an aided line, when its rates
were the lowest it could obtain.

On this subject, the United States Auditor of Railway Accounts
says :

The Government has taken away business across the State of Nevada, and
has also given transportation to the Northern Pacific, the Southern Pacific,
the Achison, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Atlantic and Pacific and the Canadian
Pacific, all rival roads, and is paying them full rates, when they could get it
done for less rates by the aided Central Pacific.

The effect of this departure by the Government from the plain
terms of the contract, may be best understood, when it is stated
that the action of the Government in the subsidizing of rival lines,
and transferring the business of the Government to them, has re-
sulted to the present time in decreasing the receipts of the Cen-
tral Pacific over seventeen millions of dollars, within three mil-
lion dollars of the entire amount of aid derived by the Company
from the loan of the bonds of the Government ; and this conse-
quence is an equity to be considered and allowed in stating the
account between the Government and this Company.

It is shown by the books of the Central Pacific, that all the
business done for the Government by that Company, in the
transportation of freight, for the sixteen years between 1870 and
1885, inclusive, amounts to but $1,098,047. That the cost for the
same service which would have been paid, at the rates charged to
the United States prior to the completion of the Central Pacific
Railroad, would have been $10,7 21,218.

And by a table annexed to the deposition of Mr. Miller, the
Secretary of the Central Pacific, it appears, that in addition to
the $1,098,047 paid to the Central Pacific, the total amount paid
to the Union Pacific for the same sixteen years was $4,642,706,
making the payment to both Companies $5,740,753. That at the
rate formerly paid by the United States for such services, the
charge would have been $61,161,703, making a saving to the
United States during those sixteen years by the construction of
the Union and Central Pacific Railroads of $55,421,554, which is
$411,362 more than the principal of the bonds issued by the United
States to the Union Pacific, the Central Pacific and the Western
Pacific.

But, in addition to this saving in the transportation of freight
for the same sixteen years mentioned above, the United Stales
paid to the Central and Union Pacific for the transportation of
troops and passengers moving on the business of the Government
$4,616,053.

Taking the reports made to the War Department by various
Quartermasters, it is shown that for the nervices rendered,
included in the last mentioned figures, there would have been
paid by the United States before the construction of the railroad
$49,178,967, making a saving to the Government of $44,562,914,
which, added to the amount saved on transportation of freight,
leaves in the Treasury of the United States over one hundred
millions of dollars, between the amount paid to the Railroad
Companies and the amount it would have paid for like services
if the railroad had not been built.

But this does not state the entire financial benefit to the United
States. On the 21st of October, 1868, the Post Office Depart-
ment contracted with Wells, Fargo & Co. for the transportation
of the United States mails between the western terminus of the
Union Pacific and the eastern terminus of the Central Pacific, for
the term of one year, from October 1st, 1868, until the two

railroads should meet, at the rate of $1,750,000 per annum, sub-
ject to reduction pro rata for every section of fifty miles of rail-
road completed. This contract expired on the 9th day of May,
1869, when the Union and Central effected a junction.

But the Government did not deal so liberally with the Railroad
Companies. The entire distance of the services, performed by
Wells, Fargo & Co., was 1,095 miles ; but for the nearly 1,900
miles over which the Union and Central carried the mails of a very
much larger bulk than that moved by Wells, Fargo & Co., and
which has been and is constantly increasing, the Government has
paid to the Union and Central from July 1st, 1868, to December
31st, 1885, as compiled from the reports of the Postmaster-Gen-
eral for the several years, $10,606,507.22. At the rate paid for
the tardy service, and the small volume of mails transported fur
the same length of time prior to the completion of the roads, the
Government paid $49,970,780.49, leaving a saving to the Post
Office Department of $39,364,273.29, making the entire saving to
the United States for the sixteen years following the completion
of the road, an amount exceeding one hundred and thirty-nine
millions of dollars. And this saving was effected in one-half the
time that the bonds loaned to these Companies had to run, or, in
other words, leaving fourteen years to run before the maturity of
these bonds. Computing at the same rate, the entire saving to
the Government at that time will be about $260,000,000. The
Commissioner of Railroads, in his Report for 1883, says :

" The saving to the Government has greatly exceeded the
current interest it has paid.''''

Shall it be said, in view of such an enormous financial benefit
to the Government, and its failure to accord to those who con-
tracted with it, and who have been the factors to produce this
result, the benefits that were promised from its transportation
and business, that there are no equities to be considered in de-
termining the present relation of the Central Pacific Railroad
Company and the United States ? As the Commissioner hereto-
fore quoted from said, in his Report for 1883 :

" All these considerations appeal loith great force to the liberality
of Congress^ and we add, but more to its sense of justice.

There should be no unkind feeling on the part of the
Government or any of its departments towards the men and the
corporations causing this saving to its Treasury.

These men should not be met with vituperation or disdain ; there
are equities in their position which it would be infamous in the
Government to disregard. They should be treated with justice.

The United States invited these men, using the language of
Mr. Justice Davis, to aid them in performing a national work.
They have done more than their part ; but the Government has
failed in the most valuable part of its engagement.

Not only this, but it has changed the contract by the mere
might of its legislative power, compelling these men to meet an
obligation before it was due. It does not afford these men even
the advantage of a respectful or impartial hearing. They are
met by the Government and its organs with aspersion and con-
temptuous abuse.

In addition to retaining all the earnings of the Company
from Government transportation upon the aided road, the Gov-
ernment has refused to pay for the services rendered on connecting
railroads built by private capital, now amounting to about two
millions, the loss of which and payment of interest, and the
pledging of securities to borrow an equal amount, subjects the
Company to great embarrassment.

The question as to the liability of the Government to pay the
Company the money earned on the unaided roads has been de-
termined by the Court of Claims, and the judgment of that Court
has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Court, in that case, speaking through Mr. Justice Woods,
said :

The subsidy bonds granted to the Company being granted only in respect
to the original road, are a lien on that portion only ; and the five per cent.
of net earnings is only demanded on the net earnings of said portion.

And, citing from the opinion of Mr. Justice Bradley in a pre-
vious case, the following :

With this decision in view, it would be impossible to hold with any show
of reason that the compensation for services rendered the United States,
which, by the same section, is required to be applied to the payment of the
same bonds, included compensation for services rendered by a road the con-
struction of which had not been aided by the issue to the Company of Gov-
5

eminent bonds. As the contract between the United States and the Bail-
road Company, contained in the Acts of July 1, 1862, and July 2, 1864, has
been interpreted by this Court to authorize the retention by the Government
of compensation for services only on the road which the United States aided
in building, the construction which the appellant seeks to put upon the
second section of the Act of May 8, 1878, would not only render that section
a breach of faith on the part of the United States, but an invasion of the
constitutional rights of the appellee. We are bound, if possible, to so construe
the law as to lay it open to neither of these objections. The construction
contended for by the appellee preserves the good faith of the Government.

But notwithstanding that decision, although rendered at the
October term of 1885, the Government still refuses to make pay-
ment to the Company for the services performed on the unaided
road, and still retains in its Treasury nearly $2,000,000, on which
the Company is losing the same rate of interest it is charged by
the Government, $120,000 per annum.

There is no reasonable pretext for the Government refusing to
obey the judgment of the highest Court.

It has drawn from the Central Pacific every dollar which it is
by law authorized to receive, and its refusal to accord to the
Central Pacific its rights, as declared by the highest tribunal of
the country, is an act unworthy of any civilized government. It
has used its power to make a forced loan, and to retain the pro-
perty of a citizen ; as was said by Mr. Justice Bradley, it has as-
serted the principle that might makes right, and is guilty of acts
of oppression that we should condemn, but not wonder at if per-
formed by the authorities of a petty Central American State or by
a ruler in Algiers.

VI.

Dividends.

The Commissioners are charged to inquire whether any di-
vidends have been unlawfully declared by the Directors, or paid
to the stockholders of such Company, and if so, to what extent,
and whether the amount thereof may not be recovered from the
Directors unlawfully declaring the same, or the persons who have
unlawfully received the same.

As an original proposition, it would seem as if this was a

matter that rested between the stockholders and the corporation,
and not between the Government and the Company,

But the opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States,
in the case of the United States vs. The Union Pacific Railroad
and others, (98 TT. S., p. 569,) decides :

That the United States has two distinct relations to the Railroad Company,
viz. : the legislative and visitorial power of the Government creating the
corporation, and the relation growing out of the contract formed on the
charter and its amendments.

The suit in that case was brought under the statute of March
3, 1873, and asked for a decree in favor of the Union Pacific
Railroad Company, for money due for capital stock, for money
or property received from it on fraudulent contracts, and for
money or property which ought, in equity, to belong to the
Company.

It was held that the bill exhibits no right to relief on the part of the
United States, founded on the charter contract ; that the Company has con-
structed its road to completion, keeps it in running order, and carries for the
Government all that is required of it. It owes the Government nothing that
is due, and the Government has the security which by law is provided.

Such is the position of the Central Pacific Railroad Company
towards the Government at this time. In its relation of debtor
and creditor, the United States has that security upon the prop-
erty of the Company which it demanded. Nothing is now due
or payable ; and it has no concern with the disbursement of the
earnings of the road, until some default occurs in the payments
which are fixed by the contract, or in the forced changes thereto
made by statutes.

It will be remembered that the Central Pacific Railroad Com-
pany was not completed on the proceeds of the bonds furnished
by the Government. That aid, granted by the passage of the
Act of 1864, if disposed of at that time, the price of gold being
2.90, would have yielded but $9,605,407 ; but, as after the close
of the war, the credit of the Government improved, and by
selling the bonds to the best advantage that the haste in which
the road was constructed enabled it to do, something over
twenty millions was realized, which was less than two-filths of
the cost of the road from Sacramento to Ogden. But, after all,

the assets which tbe Central Pacific had for the completion of
the aided road, including the proceeds of such portion of its
stock which had been sold, Avere, as we have heretofore shown,
entirely insufficient ; it was heavily in debt, which it could not
have retired if it had been pressed to do so at that time.

In the course of the investigation a witness was asked by one
of the Commissioners : What effect would it have had on the
Central Pacific Railroad Company's property, if, instead of
dividing eighteen millions, between 1877 and 1884, among its
stockholders, it had been applied to bettering the condition of its
road, and extending its earning capacity ? Do you not think,
that if this had been done, the road would have been in better
shape to repay its debt to the Government than it is now ? That
is the position assumed by the Commission on behalf of the
Government, and may be answered here : The Central Pacific has
discharged all its financial obligations to the Government as they
arose. It is not in default. It has rendered to the Government
everything the contract required in keeping its road in good
condition, in yielding it to the use of the Government whenever
demanded. It has paid the Government all that it agreed to pay,
all that has been extorted from it by legislative hostility in adding
to its contract burden ; and the Government having provided the
manner in which the principal and interest of the bonds should
be paid, must take its satisfaction in that way. The mortgage,
which the Act of 1862, Sec. 5, says should ipso facto exist in favor
of the United States on the issue and delivery of the bonds to the
Company, is not upon the tolls, income, rents or profits of the
Company, except to the extent of five per cent, of its net earnings,
but is " on the whole line of railroad and telegraph, together with
the rolling stock, fixtures and property of every kind and descrip-
tion, and in consideration of which said bonds may be issued."

In the mean time, the road belonging to the corporation, it has
a right to divide from time to time among its stockholders all its
surplus earnings — all the earnings not required for the performance
of its contract, or the law which impairs that contract ; and the
Act of 1862 recognized this right, up to ten per cent, per annum,
as a remuneration to the stockholders.

But the Central Pacific Railroad Company, from its incorpora-
tion to 1884, paid more than the amount mentioned by the Examin-
ing Commissioner. The total payments were $34,308,055, or about

2.65 per cent, per annum. Of this amount, ten millions were
earned from a profit on leased lines, and about four millions from
other non-aided roads not included in the leases, and about twenty
millions from the aided roads during the mining prosperity in
Nevada, and before its earnings were crippled and interfered with
by the competitive lines subsidized by the United States, and
during the time that the Government was unable to divert its
business from it to an unaided line. But for those lines, one of
which the Central owners, for their own protection, were forced to
purchase and complete, the financial ability of the Central Pacific
to comply with the demands of the Government would have been
essentially different from what they are now.

It will not be denied that those who put their money into this
enterprise were entitled to large dividends for the risk that was
incurred.

He would have been a bold man who had predicted, when Sher-
man was crossing Georgia, and when the Central Pacific was
trying to scale the Sierra Nevada Mountains, that any person who
invested in the stock of the Central Pacific would ever again
see his money, leaving out of question the risk which each
subscriber or purchaser took of being liable for the debts con-
tracted by the Company to aid in the construction prior to the
receipt of the bonds of the Government, or the sale of its own
bonds.

As was said by Senator Trumbull, in the debate preceding the
passage of the Act of 1864 :

All that Congress proposes to do is to do enough and only enough to induce
capitalists to build this Pacific Railway. We shall be indebted to them when
they do that. * * * All we want is to obtain the construction of
this road ; that is what is of national importance. * * * Sir,
this is not an ordinary enterprise. The Senator says large inducements are
held out. Why, sir, it is a great undertaking. It is for the building of a
railroad through a wilderness country and over mountains where, unless
there is some inducement, capitalists will not be likely to construct the road.
* * * It is a great enterprise. It is great, certainly, in one par-
ticular. It is great in the hazards which are run by those who may embark
in it.

Mr. Wilson said :

I want to be a liberal in money. * * * Jf,by the liberality of
t7ds Government, either by money or land, we can induce capitalists to put in

the money necessary to complete tlie road, we shall have achieved something
for the country.

Mr. Washburne said, in the House of Representatives :

I do not believe there is one man in five hundred who will invest his
money and engage in building this road as the law now stands, and we must,
therefore, hold out inducements for them to join in the undertaking. We
must grant the facilities which are needed. * * * We want
this road, stretching from the granite hills of New-England to the golden
sands of California. When completed, it will far outshine in grandeur and
usefulness the famed Appian Way. It will be the greatest and most useful
work done by man.

The $2.65 per annum, which the dividends to stockholders
averaged, does not cover the whole time in which their money
was invested, and it is entirely fair to calculate that the average
returns would not be over two per cent, per annum.

But can the Government with any reason complain of the re-
turns made to the stockholders, when contrasted with its own
dividends upon the bonds which it has advanced to the Company
and the interest that it has paid ?

The advances to the Central and Union Pacific Railroad Com-
panies are of the par value of $55,092,192 00
It has paid for interest up to the first of January,
1886, for the Union Pacific, $29,043,327 21
For the Central and Western, 29,299,156 21

58,342,483 42

$113,434,675 42

It has received from the Central Pacific, for
five per cent, of the net earnings, from 1869
to June 30, 1878, 1,871,430 00

It has received one-half transportation charges
on aided lines of the Central Pacific, from
1867 to June 30, 1878, .... 1,745,59847

And since the last mentioned date the pay-
ments under the Thurman Act require-
ments have been sufficient to increase the
amount to 10,427,238 11

And this amount is increased by the two millions due to the
Company for services on unaided lines, which, as the debtor is ex-

ecution proof, may, for the purpose of this statement, be reckoned
as a payment.

It has saved, as previously shown, in the transportation of
freight, troops and passengers, over one hundred million dollars.

Saved in transportation of United States Mails for the same
sixteen years, $39,364,273.25 — making a total of $154,586,885.78.

In addition to this saving of money it has, by the building of
these roads, pacified the Indians along the line, so that some of its
forts have been abandoned and its troops withdrawn ; and what
is of more consequence than the amount that has been received or
retained, or will be retained in the Federal Treasury is, that the
settler can now sow and reap without incurring the risk of an attack
from hostile Indians, and can return from his day's labor without
finding his home in ashes and his wife or children murdered or bru-
tally outraged ; and the lives of the young men previously sent to
garrison the frontier forts are no longer the prey of the tomahawk
or bullet of the savage. And in addition, when occasion arises for
moving the troops of the United States, instead of marching
twenty miles a day, they are now moved five hundred miles in
the same time.

Quoting the language of General Sherman, in his report for
1883, p. 46 :

These roads enable us to send soldiers to threatened points at the rate of
five hundred miles a day, thus overcoming the space in one day which used
to require a full month of painful marching.

And by the building of these roads and those feeders concerning
which so much fault has been found, joined to its eastern connec-
tions, the entire army of the United States can be moved to any
point within its territory inside of a week of the time that the
order for its transportation is given.

If we review the history of the world, if we read Creasy's ac-
count of the fifteen decisive battles, from Marathon to Waterloo, and
learn how the destinies of nations have been affected, and civiliza-
tion advanced or retrograded, and maps changed by delay in the
movement of armies, can we imagine that any nation, ancient or
modern, would have grudged the little aid loaned by the United
States to these subsidized roads to produce such a result, and

which has been repaid one and one-half times within twenty-one
years ?

In the chronicles of the reign of Elizabeth, we are told that
when her Council met to determine how the attack of the Spanish
Armada should be repulsed, it was proposed to prevent the land-
ing of the troops of the King of Spain by a muster of all the in-
habitants of England at a given point. Sir Walter Raleigh, who
took part in that discussion, said that such a measure was not
feasible ; that if the fleet composing the Armada appeared off the
Lizard, and it was feared that their landing was to be prevented
at that point, they could, in six hours sailing, make a landing off
Portland, but it would take six days marching to move troops
between those points.

In the last report made by General Sherman, as General of the
Army, (Report of 1883, p. 5, et seq.,) he says :

I now regard the Indian as substantially eliminated from the problem of
the army. There may be spasmodic or temporary alarms, but such Indian
wars as have heretofore disturbed the public peace and tranquillity, are not
probable. The army has been a large factor in producing this result ; but it
is not the only one. Immigration and the occupation by industrious farmers
and miners of the lands vacated by the aborigines, has been largely instru-
mental to that end. But the railroad, (the italics are the General's,) which
used to follow in the rear, now goes forward with the picket line, in the
great battle of civilization with barbarism, and has become tbe greater cause.
I have, in former reports, for the past fifteen years, treated of this matter,
and now, on the eve of withdrawing from active participation in public
affairs, I beg leave to emphasize much which I have spoken and written
heretofore. The recent completion of the last of the four great trans-conti-
nental lines of railway has settled forever the Indian question, the army
question, and many others which have heretofore troubled the country.
* * * I regard the building of these roads as the most important event
of modern times, and believe they account fully for the peace and good order
which now prevails throughout our country. A vast domain, equal to two-
thirds of the whole United States, has been thus made accessible to the immi-
grant, and in a military sense, our troops may be assembled at strategic points,
and sent promptly to the place of disturbance, checking disorders in the bud.

General Grant, when Acting Secretary of "War in 1867, said in
his Report for the fiscal year 1867-68 :

During the last summer and summer before, I caused inspections to be
made of the various routes of travel and supplies through the territory be-
tween the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast. The cost of maintaining

troops in that section was so enormous that I desired, if possible, to reduce
it. This I was enabled to do, to some extent, from the information obtained
by these inspections ; but for the present the military establishment between
the lines designated must be maintained at a great cost per man. The com-
pletion of the railroads to the Pacific will materially reduce the cost, as well
as the number of men to be kept there. The completion of these roads will
also go far toward a permanent settlement of our Indian difficulties. There is
good reason to hope that negotiations now going on with the hostile tribes of
Indians will result, if not in permanent peace, at least in a suspension of hos-
tilities until the railroads are pushed through that portion of the Indian ter-
ritory where they are giving the most trouble. (Report of Secretary of
War, 1867-68, Vol. I., p. 3.)

Quartermaster-General Meigs, in his report, dated November
8, 1865, (see Report of the Secretary of War, 1865-66, Vol. I, p.
113,) commenting on the cost of transportation over the Plains,
shows that a bushel of corn cost —

$2.79 at Fort Riley.

9. 44 at Fort Union.

5.03 at Fort Kearney.

9.26 at Fort Laramie.
10.05 at Denver.
17.00 at Salt Lake City.

He states that —

The cost of transportation for military stores westward across the Plains
by contract during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1865, amount to
$6,338,856.37.

"This expenditure," the Quartermaster-General continues, "would be
reduced by the opening of railroads, by a sum which would aid materially in
paying interest upon the cost of their construction,"

At the same time, the cost of transportation of a pound of corn,
hay, clothing, subsistence, lumber, or arjy other necessary of the
troops, from the base of supplies at Fort Leavenworth, was as
follows :

To Fort Riley, per pound, .

2.46

cents

" Fort Union,

. 14.35

" Fort Kearney,

6.44

" Fort Laramie,

. 14.10

" Denver,

. 15.53

" Salt Lake City,

. 27.84

Supplies in those days had to be carried with the troops, and
could not be obtained on the line of march. The maintenance
of marching bodies of men was thus greatly increased as they
continued westward. The settlement and development of the
West, consequent upon the completion of the railroad, enabled
the army to purchase its supplies near at hand, at a cost in which
transportation bore no material part.

The cost of the transportation of grain alone, used by the army
on the Plains in 1865, was $3,323,829.37. (See Report of Colonel
S. L. Brown, Division of Regular Supplies, in Report of Secretary
of War, 1865, Vol. I., p. 251.)

The Quartermaster-General, in his report for 1866, page 302,
states, on this subject :

The supply of the posts on the Plains with forage has always imposed a
heavy financial burden upon this department. The Missouri River has for
years marked the limit of the cereal-producing region of the West, and grain
transported from that point, when it reached the garrisons stationed near the
Rocky Mountains, had reached an enormous price. The cost of foraging one
horse equalled the cost of feeding a dozen animals in the States.

The record kept in the Comptroller's Department of the Cen-
tral Pacific shows that a single Indian war has cost more than
the whole amount of bonds issued to the Pacific Railroads.

The Pacific Railroad Committee of the Senate, in a report
dated February 19, 1869, made the following statement on this
subject :

What is the cost of our Indian wars as compared with the cost of the Pa-
cific Railways, which will speedily end the Indian wars ? A compilation
from the official records of the Government shows that these wars for the
last thirty-seven years have cost the nation twenty thousand lives and more
than $750,000,000. In the years 1864-65 the Quartermaster's Department
spent $28,374,288 for military service against the Indians. * * * The
Chairman of the House Committee on Indian Affairs estimated recently that
the present current expenses of our warfare with the Indians was one million
dollars a week — $144,000 a day. (40th Congress, 3d Session, Senate Rep.
Com. 219.)

The statesmanship that incurred the liability to induce the
Pacific Railroad Companies to build the highway that has saved
so many lives and so much treasure needs no defence.

The men who voted to use the lands and credit of the Govern-

merit for this purpose were worthy successors of those who
pledged the resources of the nation for its independence ; but
the historian who shall relate the wisdom shown by the people's
representatives in obtaining this highway, resulting so much to
the grandeur and dignity of the nation, will have to fortify with
incontrovertible evidence his further statement that the whole
power of the Executive and Legislative branch of the Govern-
ment was used within a few years after the completion of this
great work to persecute and harass the men who, in the language
of the Senator from Missouri, "had performed the greatest
achievement of the human race on the earth"

While Generals Grant and Sherman were convincing our
brethren of the South that successful resistance to the perpetuity
of this Union was impossible, these railroad builders were at the
same time bending their matchless energy to cement the fruits of
the victories of these generals, by uniting the remote sections
of our continent, and subduing to the purposes of civilization
vast ranges that had been trodden only by the savage and the
buffalo. Look westward of the Missouri, and you see the
wilderness receding fast before the advancing tide of life and
oivilization, vast harvests waving round the blackened stumps of
a pathless forest, and cottages, barns and mills rising amidst the
haunts of the wolf and the bear.

By their subsequent efforts in building railroads, running
north and south, they have brought the people of the Northern
and Southern States into closer and more fraternal relations than
they ever before knew.

But at the time of which we were speaking, when they were
serving the political purposes of the Government, in connecting
the Missouri with the Pacific, and making one-half of the territory
of the United States habitable, they were also solving the
engineering doubts, so often expressed, as to the physical ability
of constructing a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

They were opening a safe and speedy highway across this
continent, that might be used between the Old World and the
Empire of China, with India, Japan, New-Zealand, the continent
of Australasia, and the many fertile isles of the South Pacific.

Some of the fruits of their peacef ul victories may be seen at the
wharves of San Francisco, on the arrival of one of the huge

steamers that ply between that port and Hong Kong or Yokohama.
You will see, alighting from such vessels, men bearing authority
from the Emperor of China to represent his interests with the
Governments of Washington, London or Paris. You will see.
British diplomats, who in fifteen days will be in conference with
chiefs in London on the affairs of the English Colonies in the
Pacific.

You will see officers of the French and German navies, who
have been summoned by their respective Ministers of Marine to
report at headquarters. You see unlading from the steamers the
products of China and Japan — tea, silks and various manufac-
tures of Asiatic labor — to be distributed between San Francisco
and the Mississippi. All these results, emanating from the in-
domitable courage and perseverance of these men, who were not
slothful in business, but were fervent in the spirit of their great
works — serving the Lord by their grand achievement.

But if you would know more of the benefits that have been
derived from the construction of this first overland road, you
must pass over it.

You will see trains of cars carrying emigrants who are seeking
homes on the fertile lands of the Far West.

You will see that these travellers are well cared for, and are
contented, that the railroad companies have devised a car in
which they may journey to their destination in health and com-
fort, and then contrast their lot with those of the emigrant
crossing the same country for the twenty years preceding the
completion of these roads.

As Mr. Sargent so graphically said from his place in the House
of Representatives : 4

" With such a road you avoid Indian wars. You would save the lives of
citizens, who now take their weary way across the Territories, falling victims
to savage onslaught. You can follow the emigrant trail from Missouri to
California and never lose your way, for the route is broadly marked with the
bones of men and beasts, of broken wagons and abandoned property."

The " Tragedies of the Plains," as they were termed by early
California writers, may be referred to in describing the hardships
and cruel treatment of emigrants from the frontier States to
California before the construction of these railroads.

One case was reported of a party, including women and chil-

(55

dren, whose mules bad been poisoned by tbe Indians, and Avho
were slowly toiling westward, carying such stores as they could
pack, until they were rescued by tbe wagons and teams of other
emigrants overtaking tbem.

Another, of an entire party. being killed by the Indians, except
a mother, and son of about ten years of age ; she ended her life
with a pistol shot to avoid a worse fate, the boy escaping to tell
the story.

Another, of the destruction of an entire family, except two
women, mother and daughter, who were taken and kept prisoners
for several years, when they escaped to the trail, and were brought
into one of the California settlements, both having during their
imprisonment borne children to their captors.

Instances of shocking events of this character were of such
frequent occurrence, that it will take more space than we can
spare to enumerate even a small portion of them.

Disease wasted the lives of many of these unfortunate emi-
grants ; scarcity of water, food of poor quality and insufficient in
quantity, tending to fill many graves. Families might be seen
camped in and under their wagons, all laid low with fever, and
having but a scant supply of water to cool their heated bodies.

A touching story was told in Sacramento in 1850. An emigrant
wagon was being used as a place of shelter by a man and
woman on the levee of that city, their team being picketed near
by ; a fire had been made to cook their evening meal ; the
woman sat by the fire, and the tears were trickling down her
cheeks ; in answer to an inquiry as to the cause of her grief, she
replied : " When we left Missouri we were four, but two little
graves on the Humboldt contain my two little girls — my only
children."

The condition of emigrants, then and now, would be sufficient
warrant for the Government aid, loaned or given, to accomplish
such a result, and which some of the legislators who voted for the
bill predicted. Shortly after the road commenced to be operated
as a trans-continental line, a passenger on the train of the Central
Pacific, going eastward through the Humboldt Valley, might
have been seen sitting on the platform of a car. The day was
hot and the road very dusty, so that he was soon covered with the
alkaline soil of that region. Still, for some hours, he kept his
place, and, being asked the reason, said : " In the last three hours

I have ridden over a space that some years ago, when on my way
to California, I traversed with my wagon and poor tired mules in
three weeks. Some days," he said, " we did not move at all, and
generally not more than four miles in a day. We were trying to
get the animals in condition that they might pull the wagons over
the - Sierra Nevada.' "

Are not the men whose energy has accomplished so much, who
performed this great work in so short a time, as if by magic, who
have thus conduced to the convenience, safety and commercial
advantage of all the world, and more especially of our own
citizens, entitled to some favorable consideration at the hands of
the people's representatives in the determination of the present
controversy ? And are they not entitled to such dividends or
pecuniary reward as results from their skill in handling the en-
terprise ?

They will receive no more in the way of dividends ; the com-
petitive lines aided by the Government will prevent that.

VII.

Cost or the War in Utah.

The cost of the war in Utah was frequently alluded to in the
debates preceding both the passage of the Act of 1862 and of
1864.

A search of the records of the War Department does not dis-
close any tabulated statement giving the amount actually paid
out, but a recent letter from the Acting Secretary of War states
that the following articles were furnished by the United States
for the use of the expedition to Utah :

22 Ambulances.

29 Light Wagons.

988 Baggage Wagons.

6,447 Mules.

254 Horses, in addition to the horses furnished for the mounted corps, and
for the transportation of supplies for the army.

And for the depots at Fort Kearney and Fort Laramie, on the route, 3,938
wagons, 33 mules and 49,896 oxen.

The contract of Messrs. Russell, Majors & Waddell, dated
January 16, 1858, shows the following rates per 100 pounds per

100 miles, for the transportation by them of freight for the
United States, varying with the season of the year :

January and February,

March,

April to September,

September,

October, .

$4 00.

2 90.

1 80.

2 20.

3 00.
November and December, 4 50.

Freight not exceeding 10,000,000 pounds, and an increase of 25 per cent,
to be allowed on freight from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 pounds, and 35 per
cent, for quantity beyond 15,000,000 pounds.

It will not be of practical utility to make a detailed estimate
of the value of the outfit above mentioned, nor have we suffi-
cient information to state the total amount paid for transportation.
Soon after the termination of the campaign it was estimated at
from twelve to fifteen millions of dollars, and army circles have're-
ceived as true the statement that the entire expense to the
Government was not much less than thirty million dollars more
than the amount of bonds loaned to the Central and Western
Pacific.

This expedition made the fortunes of the Mormons ; they sold
for the use of the troops their spare agricultural products at
enormous prices, and acquired the outfit of the expedition with
but small outlay. The financial result to the Mormons induced
Brigham Young to say that he had made war successfully on the
United States.

At this time, of course, such an expedition is entirely unneces-
sary, but without the building of the Pacific Railroads the control
of the Mormons would have been as costly as of the Indians.

VIII.

Contracts let to Charles Crocker & Co. and the Contract
and Finance Company for the Construction of the Cen-
tral Pacific Railroad from Sacramento to Promontory.

The officers of the Central Pacific Railroad Company have
been unsparingly denounced for their action in letting these con-
tracts ; but it will be seen, on a fair review of their situation at
that time, it was the wisest and most advantageous thing that

could be done for the interests of the corporation and the Gov-
ernment, and that it was the only practical way in which the road
could then have been built.

The immigration to California commenced in 1849, and for the
succeeding five years it was peopled with a rapidity unknown in
history. California became a State on the 9th of September,
1850, so that at the time of the passage of the Act of Congress
of 1862, it had been within the Union a little short of twelve
years.

The promoters of the Central Pacific were, speaking compara-
tively, old residents, in a country which had had an American
population for less than thirteen years. Large fortunes at that
time had not been accumulated, and they were acquainted with all
the men in California who had money to invest or to loan. The
banking capital, of course, could not be great. There were not a
great many men who had any surplus not required for daily use
in their business. The directors would willingly have let the
contract to parties not interested in their corporation if such per-
sons could have been found. Or the corporation would have
constructed the road within its own organization if it could have
commanded the necessary funds. For the lack of finding these,
Mr. Crocker proposed to take a contract for the construction of
the first eighteen miles of the road, and for that purpose resigned
his seat in the Board of Directors, to which he had been elected
at its organization, he believing, and the directors agreeing, that
he would be more useful to the purposes of the Company in the
speedy construction of the road, as a contractor than as a
director.

But from the handling of the first shovelful of earth at the
City of Sacramento until Mr. Crocker completed his labor as a
contractor, at or near the eastern boundary of the State of Cali-
fornia, it was not contemplated that any profits should be made
in the work of construction. The idea was to get the road
through in the quickest possible time, so as to give the Govern-
ment its use as early as possible, and that the promoters should,
if possible, retain their interest in the corporation at the time
the work was completed.

It is in evidence that the firm of Charles Crocker & Co. was
formed, but at such formation Mr. Crocker had no partner. His
intention was, as he proceeded with the work and demonstrated

its practicability, to invite others to join him ; but in this he ap-
pears to have been disappointed. His financial position as con-
tractor was not sufficiently inviting to attract an associate with
•capital.

When the work on the mountains commenced, when, in the
language of the Superintendent of Bridges, the snow had to be
removed to a depth of twenty to thirty feet, so as to find a rest-
ing place for the timbers used for trestle and bridge purposes,
that they might be stored upon the ground that had been cleared
from snow and not be liable to be washed away by a thaw, Mr.
Crocker found that he had probably assumed a task beyond his
financial strength. So we find him complaining of his burilen to
the directors. It would seem that the work of grubbing and clear-
ing the line , of track, removing trees and stumps at a cost of
from two to five thousand dollars a mile, so that the embankment
of the railroad could be made upon it, threatened to engulf him.
And we can imagine his cry to the other promoters of the road :
" save me, or I perish."

Mr. Stanford testifies :

Bat it very soon became apparent that no ordinary rules that would gov-
ern between contractors would answer the purpose of the rapid construction
of the road ; that sacrifices must be made which the Company could afford,
but a contractor, looking to profits out of his contract, could not. Mr.
Crocker become^apprehensive about his personal liabilities.

He was then told to go on with the work without regard to the
terms of the contract, and that the directors would " see him
through." Some portions of the road on the western side of the
mountains had been let to small contractors. Some had per-
formed their contracts ; some had not. Mr. Crocker assumed
the contracts of those who were derelict, and did the work at the
price at which it had been let. But it was evidently impossible
to obtain contracts from responsible people for building over the
mountains ; and if such contracts had been let, it would simply
have resulted in delay and expense to the corporation ; for the
•contractors could not have performed their agreement. It was a
new work. Nothing like it had been seen in this country, or, I
may say, in any other. The great railroad building over the
Mount Cenis route in Switzerland, and over the Tyrol in Austria,
great feats of engineering, as they were claimed to be, and as

they undoubtedly were ; sink into utter insignificance in com-
parison with the construction of a road over, or I may say
through, the Sierra Nevada Mountains. On the Swiss or Aus-
trian roads they are not protected by miles of snow-sheds and
galleries ; nor are their mountains terraced from the base to
nearly the apex with a series of retaining walls to prevent the
avalanches of snow demolishing the snow-sheds, or proving
graves for the builders ; for the tracks upon those lines have no
such protection. They were but few who believed in the prac-
ticability of the work, or who thought it could be successfully
carried to completion.

It would have been utterly futile to have attempted to bind
any contractor, not interested in the*future of the Company, to
perform that work. The corporation was not in a position to
agree to make payments at fixed dates. Mr. Crocker understood
its position. He undertook the work, knowing that he would
get his pay just when the corporation could raise it, and not be-
fore. No other solvent contractor would have made any such
arrangement, nor could any solvent contractor have been obtained
to accept the contract which Mr. Crocker'undertook.

From sections one to eighteen, that is, from the levee at the
City of Sacramento to the 18th mile post, Mr. Crocker undertook
to perform the work for $400,000 ; $250,000 in cash, $100,000 in
the bonds of the Company, and $50,000 in stock.

Those who are familiar with the condition of Sacramento in
1862 and 1863, know that the construction of the road for that
eighteen miles was very expensive. The testimony of Mr. Davis,
an old resident of California, and of late years the President of a
Railroad Company, shows what had to be done to build an em-
bankment for the track, and to prevent its being washed away by
the overflow of the Sacramento River, after it was built.

The grades of the City of Sacramento, for some distance from
the Sacramento River, have been raised about nine feet, so as to
bring them on a level with the altitude of the Central Pacific
track, which it was found necessary to adopt to keep it above
the reach of the high water of the Sacramento River, in the rainy
season. In addition, the approaches to the American River had
to be protected, so that by the overflow of that river, the abut-
ments of the railroad bridge should not be endangered. So that
this eighteen miles could not be constructed from the amount

that was allowed in the contract made with Mr. Crocker ; and it
is certain that if he escaped from its performance without loss,
he took no profit.

But it is claimed that Mr. Crocker and the directors of the
Central Pacific made large profits in building the road over the
mountains. It must be admitted that ultimately, after many
years of waiting, they did realize some profit from the retention
of the stock, which Mr. Crocker took in part payment of his
work ; but to make that stock of value they had to spend years
to develop business on the road, and to build at their own cost
and risk branch roads to bring traffic to the main line.

For the 106 miles, from section 32 to* 138, which means from
Newcastle to the Truckee River, near the State line, there was
paid to Mr. Crocker, as is shown by the books of the corporation,
$8,227,980, which is at the rate of $77,622 per mile ; and there was
also paid to him $14,657,996 in stock of the Company.

So far as the stock payment was concerned, it cut no figure at
the time as an asset for building the road. It could not be sold,
it could not be bartered, and was useless as a collateral.

We have it from the evidence of Mr. Stanford, that when the
road had been constructed to the State line, the Company had
spent all its available resources, and all the securities that could be
issued on that part of the work, including the bonds loaned by
the Government, and were in debt for obligations incurred upon
that portion of the work, and the same result is proved by refer-
ence to the statistics now on file in the Treasury Department in
relation to the construction of this road.

It is very certain, from the information we have as to the cost
and character of the work, the rapidity, and the consequent want
of economy with which it was done, that the sum of $8,227,980
did not cover the entire outlay. The balance was assumed by
Charles Crocker and the directors who came to his rescue. The
estimate has been made by Mr. Stanford, and no doubt correctly,
that the cost of the work done between the 31st and 138th miles
for the reception of the track equalled, in day's work, the whole
cost of grading a railroad from Truckee to Chicago, a distance of
nearly twenty-one hundred miles.

It undoubtedly was the intention, when this contract from New-
castle to the 138th mile was let to Mr. Crocker, that the directors
should not be interested in it ; but they were forced to assume

the position they did, and to share with Mr, Crocker what was
at that time thought to be a loss on the work. It is gratifying
to know that their courageous attitude resulted in their being
rewarded with a profit, instead of meeting a deficiency. But
when Mr. Crocker's labors were concluded, he and his associates
were face to face with a position that called for the assumption
of a large amount of indebtedness, which could not at that time
be met with the stock of the Company which they held, or with
any quantity of such stock.

After the completion of the road, Mr. Crocker deposited the
stock which he had received from his various contracts, with the
Contract and Finance Company, and it was divided among the
stockholders of that Company, subject to the debts he had
incurred.

IX.

Contract and Finance Company.

The extreme financial pressure, under which the work entrusted
to Charles Crocker & Co. was performed, and the difficulty of in-
ducing people of means to become members of a private partner-
ship, led to the formation of the Contract and Finance Company.

It was supposed by the Directors of the Central Pacific, that
by granting the contract to a corporation, upon liberal terms, to
complete the road from the State line to the connection with the
Union Pacific ; the owners of capital in the eastern cities might
be induced to become stockholders in such corporation, and, in
this way, to insure the completion of the work, of which, at that
time, the Directors of the Central Pacific had very grave doubts.

It was not, as Mr. Stanford says, a matter of profit to the pro-
moters of the Contract and Finance Company ; it was a plan to
prevent, if possible, the utter failure of the enterprise.

Mr. Huntington testifies, that in his correspondence with Mr.
Hopkins, when the latter asked him how much of the stock in
the Contract and Finance Company they should take, he replied :
" Take as much as you are forced to, and as little as you must."

At that time, if it could have been done, the promoters of the
Central Pacific were entirely willing to yield their interest in the
work, if other or more responsible parties would undertake it,

and comply with the terms of the contract made between the
corporation and the Government. It was with them more a
matter of pride, that the undertaking should not fail by reason
of their financial weakness, than any question of profit. It
was their last hope, their last resort to invite capitalists to
aid in the work ; and it may be truthfully said, that the
formation of this Construction Company was quite as much in
the interests of the Government as of its promoters ; for, as is
shown, the cash payments made to the Contract and Finance
Company did not enable it to perform its contract to construct
the road from the eastern boundary of California to Promontory
by about three and a half millions of dollars.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company could not give to the
Contract and Finance Company anything more than it had. It
could not in any way injure or militate against the interests of
the Government. The Contract and Finance Company must
complete a section of twenty consecutive miles or the Central
Pacific could not receive the proceeds of the Government bonds
for that distance, nor could the corporation issue its own bonds
in advance of such completion, beyond the terms of the Act of
1865.

It was bound to return value" within the terms of the contract
to the Central Pacific, for what was paid to it. But, notwith-
standing this contract with which so much fault has been found,
it is seen that not the owner of a single dollar was willing to risk
it in assuming the responsibility of sharing its supposed profits.

Three of the capitalists of California of that day have given
their views and their experience, Mr. D. O. Mills, Mr. Lloyd
Tevis and Mr. Horace W. Carpentier. They were all offered an
interest in that contract, but they declined, because they did not
believe that there was any profit in it, or that the railroad would
pay when it was constructed, and because they feared to assume
a position that would make them liable for the debts of the rail-
road corporation as owner of its stock. The feelings of capital-
ists to the men engaged on this work is expressed in a homely
way by Mr. A. E. Davis, himself a railroad builder, that they
were thought to be insane. " We thought they were a little off.
Yes, sir ; that is what we all thought."

Mr. Huntington states, and as he is supported by the evi-
dence of Mr. Stanford, Mr. D. O. Mills and others, it was im-

possible to induce the capitalists of the money centres of the
Atlantic to become interested in that contract. Money was at
that time in such great demand that its use commanded high
rates. The currency of the country was during the entire time
of the construction of this road in a very inflated condition.

The Government was a great borrower. When the Amended
Act of 1864 was passed, General Grant had been repulsed at Cold
Harbor, and it took 2.90 of the Government paper to buy a dollar
in gold ; and at the end of the same year the price of gold was
$2.43-^. The bonds of the Government issued before the war,
which it sold at 22 premium, were selling at about 80. The
public debt at the time of the passage of the Act of 1864 was
$1,740,690,489.48, and there was still authority in the Secretary
of the Treasury, under the various Acts of Congress, passed up to
that time, to borrow a further amount of $622,284,625.

In California, where the promoters of the Central Pacific had
to raise money for the work of construction, money was in great
demand. The bonds issued by the State of California, bearing
seven per cent, interest, which was promptly paid in gold, were
selling at 71-j, a discount of 28-J per cent.

The Central Pacific was compelled to pay for all its labor and
supplies, purchased in California, in gold. It needed a large
amount. Money borrowed from the Atlantic Cities was of neces-
sity in currency. Gold had to be purchased and drawn for from
California, thus materially increasing the financial burdens of the
Central Pacific. These causes rendered uncertain in the minds of
the owners of capital what they would receive in re-imbursement
for their investment.

Added to all this was the doubt, that at this time so generally
prevailed, whether, if the road was constructed, it could be
commercially operated — the doubt as to the existence of fuel
along its line. It was known that there was not a single
navigable stream from the Missouri to the Sacramento, and for
stretches of hundreds of miles there was some question as to
whether water could be obtained sufficient and suitable to gene-
rate steam on the locomotives.

Futile as was the effort of letting the contract to Charles
Crocker & Co., and to the Contract and Finance Company, to
relieve the financial pressure on the Central Pacific, it would have
been criminally negligent on the part of the directors of that

Company, if they had not resorted to these devices ; especially
is this true of the formation of the Contract and Finance Com-
pany.

At the end of 1866, as appears in a report made by the Depart-
ment of the Interior to the House Committee on Pacific Railroads,
the Central Pacific had expended in the construction of its road
$12,000,000.

At that time, 74 miles of its road had been accepted by the
President, and it received bonds from the Treasury on

7 miles @ $16,000, $112,000

67 " " 48,000, 3,216,000

$3,328,000

It had issued its own bonds to the same amount,[net-

ting 3,328,000

$6,656,000

These bonds being estimated at 70 cents, the average

of the entire issue produced ..... $4,659,200

The bonds issued by it, on which the State of Cali-
fornia guaranteed the interest, had netted . . 980,000

The bonds received from the City of San Francisco

had produced 300,000

The bonds from Sacramento, ..... 190,000

Bonds from Placer, . 160,000

$6,289,200

Leaving the balance between this amount and $12,000,000 to
be carried by Charles Crocker and his associates.

On the 25th of October, of that year, there had been

issued to the Central Pacific of the aid-bonds, . $4,922,000

Which had been sold for 3,546,478

An equal amount of first mortgage bonds had been

issued by the Company, netting .... 3,546,478

All the money had been spent on the work, and the Company
and contractors were heavily in debt. Besides there was a large
amount of material on the ocean, in transit from New-York ;

probably averaging at that time not less than $2,000,000, and the
situation is well expressed by Mr. Miller, the Secretary of the
Central Pacific, when he said :

When the road was completed to the State line, the Company had ex-
pended the proceeds of all the United States bonds it had received, and all
the proceeds of all the County bonds, and of all its own bonds it was au-
thorized to issue up to that point, and had a floating debt of over five million
dollars.

It may seem at this time a very unimportant announcement
to say that this corporation is carrying a floating debt of five
millions, but it was a very serious position to be in when it was
laying its track along the Truckee River, with its available assets
entirely exhausted.

The Contract and Finance Company was incorporated in No-
vember, 1867.

An impartial review of the management of the Central Pacific
during the construction of its road, and the doings of its pro-
moters and contractors, must concede that the engineering talent,
so well and skillfully exhibited, was equalled by the great finan-
cial ability displayed in borrowing and contriving the necessary
funds for prosecution of the work without delay, and its comple-
tion. The figures just presented account, without further ex-
planation, for the imperative necessity of incorporating the Con-
tract and Finance Company.

It was supposed that the terms of this contract would leave a
large profit to the Construction Company, but such anticipations
were not realized. We have before us its outcome, and we see that
the caution of those to whom an interest in that contract was
offered was well founded. For Mr. Brown, the Manager and
Secretary of the Contract and Finance Company, tells us that
after the Company had fulfilled its contract in the construction
of the road to Promontory it had spent all its cash assets ; that it
was in debt exceeding three and a half millions of dollars, and
that the only remaining asset was twenty-three millions of the
stock of the Central Pacific Railroad Company.

It is very certain from all the evidence we have that no
market could be found for it, and that no considerable portion
of it could have been sold for ten cents on the dollar. There-
fore, if the Contract and Finance Company had been com-

pelled at that time to meet its indebtedness, it was bankrupt.
If a market had been found for this stock at ten cents on the
dollar, it would still have been owing about a million and a half
of dollars, without any assets of any kind to have met such
indebtedness.

Such is the outcome of those contracts which may be said to be
historic ; it shows that the corporation and the individuals who
are supposed to have gutted, destroyed and crippled the Central
Pacific Railroad Company, brought themselves beyond the verge
of bankruptcy in fulfilling their conditions.

It is equally true of this contract, as I said before with respect
to the contract let to Charles Crocker & Co., that after years of
patient waiting in the one case, from 1866 to 1881, and in the other
from 1869 to 1881, after from twelve to fifteen years of anxiety and
embarrassment, after bearing the burden of millions of dollars of
debt without any present means of liquidating in times of bank-
ruptcy or disaster, the stockholders of this Construction Company
did realize some profit. But, as actions speak louder than wordsy
and as men's views are expressed in their acts, we have indubitable
evidence of what was the value set upon the stock of this cor-
poration in 1871, two years after the Central Pacific Railroad
Company had been completed and had been in active operation.
For, at this time, when other roads had been consolidated with
the aided roads ; when the Central Pacific, by consolidation, was
the owner, in addition to the road between Ogden and San Joser
of a branch and profitable line to Oakland ; of the Oakland and
Alameda ferries ; of several hundred miles of the California and
Oregon Road, and of the San Joaquin Valley Road from the
connection on the line of the Central Pacific at Lathrop to
Goshen, we find that the stock owned by Mr. Charles and Mr. E.
B. Crocker was sold to Huntington, Hopkins and Stanford, at
twelve cents on the dollar, and was sold, not for cash, but on a
long credit.

Now the stock belonging to the Contract and Finance Com-
pany, twenty-three millions, sold at this time at twelve cents on
the dollar, two years after it had completed its contract, would
not have sufficed to pay its debt of three and a half millions and
the two years' interest which had accrued. But in 1873, two
years after this sale and four years after the completion of the
road, the purchasers were compelled to return to Mr. Crocker the

stock they had bought from him, because they could not pay for
it. It was not, in their estimation, for their interest to endeavor
to borrow the money and keep the stock which they had bought
at twelve cents on the dollar, even with the anticipation of the
dividend of three per cent., which was declared on September 13,
1874.

But we may be answered, that in the mean time, these gentlemen
had put a higher estimate on the stock of that Company, by
acquiring the stock that was represented in the suit brought by
Lambard and others, and in the suit brought by Bran nan, for which
it is alleged they paid several hundred dollars per share. The
settlement with those represented in the Lambard suit was agreed
upon in the year 1870, shortly after the completion of the road,
and the price was fixed for the stock of Brannan at the same time.
By reason of litigation that prevented settlement, it was not paid
until some time later.

The plaintiffs in those suits were stockholders in the Central
Pacific, and undoubtedly had a right to an accounting. And
we may say it was unfortunate for the interests of the directors
of the Central Pacific that it was not then made. That it
was not, was because the directors could not afford, in
view of their then financial embarrassment, to render an
account. They had but one thing to conceal at that time : Not
their wealth, not any money that they had made in the perform-
ance of their duties as directors or trustees ; but, in view of their
great indebtedness at that time, they could not afford to show
their poverty. It was the current belief, that out of the twenty-
seven millions of bonds which had been issued by the Govern-
ment, that out of the grants of land which, as Mr. Bogy, of Mis-
souri, said were not worth a cent without a railroad, that out of
bonds issued by the corporation, secured by a first mortgage upon
its property, and from the aid granted by the counties along its
main line in California, the directors had made enormous fortunes.
And it was this popular delusion that gave them credit, and per-
mitted them, without security, to float and carry the many millions
which they then owed. They could not afford to open their
books to complaining stockholders. It would have been ruin to
them to have then disclosed to their creditors, that to meet the
indebtedness they had been compelled to incur or to assume,
for what the road had cost above the proceeds of their own

bonds, and of the bonds in aid of the work, they had only the
unavailable assets of the stock of the Central Pacific, which they
could not sell, to realize the amount of such indebtedness. Such
exposure would have resulted in their undoing ; and, therefore,
it was wisdom on their part to incur further indebtedness for
the moneys required to settle the demands of these stockholders.

But, certainly, the Government is in no condition to com-
plain of these contracts, or of the stock that was issued in their
performance. As we have said before, the Government has all
that it bargained for. It has the road as security for the debt
due to it, if there is any, subject to the lien agreed upon in the
amended contract of 1864. It has had the use of the road, and
has already saved by its completion up to the present time fifty
per cent, more than it will be required to pay in the discharge of
principal and interest at the time of the maturity of the bonds. It
had no concern with the stock of the Company. It found the Cen-
tral Pacific an existing corporation. It enlisted its aid for the per-
formance of a national undertaking. There never was any doubt
but at the completion of that undertaking the property of the
corporation would be owned by its stockholders, subject to its
indebtedness.

And that is just the position to-day. The promoters of the
road were enabled to sell but little stock. Most of the stock that
was subscribed and paid for was by them. The few who came in
to help them, who faltered by the way, and who were l'eady to
lay down their burden, were relieved by these promoters ; so that
when the road was finished, with the exception of the stock
owned by Lambard and others, much of which, it may be said,
was traded for services, and did not bring a dollar into the coffers
of the corporation, the promoters and directors of the Company
were the owners of all its stock. There has not been a share of
stock illegally issued, nor a single share for which the corpora-
tion did not receive full commercial value at the time it was
issued.

But it may be further said, that these men, being the owners of
all the stock, and, as such, the owners of all the property of the
corporation, it could make no difference to any one whether the
symbol of their ownership was expressed by the issue of certificates
for one thousand shares, or for a hundred thousand shares, or for
a million. Those who dealt with them in relation to the transfer of

such stock would determine how much property was represented,,
and how much each share was worth. So we find, under the Act
of 1862, the Union Pacific was authorized to issue a certain number
of shares, of the par value of one thousand dollars each ; but by
the Amendment of 1864, they were authorized to issue the stock
in shares of one hundred dollars each, instead of one thousand, and
that the shares should be one million in number, instead of one
hundred thousand.

The number of shares of stock issued by a corporation, with
the sanction of those who are its owners, cannot make any more
difference than if a man bought a thousand acres of land, and
desired to have the title transferred to him by one hundred deeds,
each conveying ten acres, instead of by one deed for a thousand
acres.

But, as was said by Mr. Justice Miller in The United States vs.
The Union Pacific Railroad Company, (98 TI. 8., 619 :)

It is difficult to see any right which the Government has as a creditor, to in-
terfere between the corporation and those with whom it deals. It has been
careful to look out for itself in the making of the contract. It has the
rights which that contract gives. What more can it ask ? * * *

The Government made its contract, and bargained for its security. It had
a first lien on the road by the original Act of Incorporation, which would
have made its lien safe in any event. But in its anxiety to secure the con-
struction of the road, an end more important to the Government than any
one else, and still more important to the people whom it represented, it
postponed this lien to another mortgage, that means might be raised to com-
plete it.

The Government surely cannot sustain any wrong by the num-
ber of shares of stock issued. The corporators were entitled to
all the surplus earnings of the Company, and whether it is divided
into ten, one hundred or one thousand parts, certainly does no
harm to the creditors, who do not share in the distribution.
But if it should be found, that after allowing the equities claimed
by the Central Pacific, concerning which Congress has directed
the Commission to examine and report, that any material sum is
due to the Government, and it should pay off the original lien and
become the owner of the property, the stock not being entitled
to its protection, would in no way determine or interfere with
its right to the ownership of the property.

The Puechase and Building of Roads Consolidated with
the Central Pacific, op California.

The Central Pacific, with the assent of Congress, assigned its
right to construct all that portion of the aided road, from the City
of San Jose to the City of Sacramento ; but the assignees were
unable to perform the work, and after there had been several fail-
ures of contractors, the promoters of the Central Pacific arranged
with the assignees to turn the organization over to them, and they
finished and equipped the road in accordance with the require-
ments of the Act of Congress.

At the time of the connection with the Union Pacific, the aided
road consisted of a line from the City of San Jose, fifty miles
south of San Francisco, to Promontory.

The trans-continental business, both in freight and passengers,
<30uld reach San Francisco by a transfer at the City of Sacramento
to the steamboats then plying the waters of the Sacramento,
and owned by the corporation known as the California Steam
Navigation Company ; or, being carried to San Jose, they could
be transferred to the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad
•Company, and would reach San Francisco, a distance of 1 77 miles,
which route, from San Jose to San Francisco, was impeded by a
grade of 92 feet to the mile.

To utilize the construction of the Western Pacific, it became
necessary to connect it with the City of Oakland, and from there
use the ferry to San Francisco.

The distance from Niles to San Francisco, 30.2 miles, makes
the transit in this way, 139.57 miles, against the distance by way
•of San Jose, 177 miles, making a saving by this route over that
by San Jose, of thirty-six and a half miles, and avoiding the
heavy grades on the latter. To accomplish this result, and avoid
paying ferriage on the business of the aided road, it was necessary
to purchase the lines of the San Francisco and Oakland, and the
San Francisco and Alameda Railroads and their ferries.

When the main line was finished, it afforded but little cpnveni-
-ence to people, either in the northern or southern parts of the
.State of California ; to afford the proper accommodation, to

increase its revenue, and to invite immigration and settlement, it
was necessary that feeders should be constructed. Accordingly
the promoters and stockholders of the Central Pacific organized
the Company called the San Joaquin Valley Company, for the
purpose of building a line of railroad from Lathrop, a point on the
Western Pacific Railroad, about eight miles south of Stockton, to
Goshen, in the County of Tulare, a distance of 146.3 miles.

'This road was built by the Contract and Finance Company with
money furnished by the stockholders of that Company, and was
paid for in the bonds and stock of said Railroad Company.

It may be said of this contract as of many others that were let
to the different construction companies in which the Directors of
the Central Pacific have been stockholders, that they built the
road with moneys furnished by themselves, and had the road for
their outlay. In other words, they paid to the Construction
Company the bonds and stock of the railroad so constructed, and
waited until such time as they could develop sufficient business
on the road built, to induce the public to buy the bonds or the
stock. If the country through which the railroad ran developed
sufficient business, then the project was a success ; if it did not,
then the operation was a loss. These gentlemen took all the re-
sponsibility ; any loss occurring was necessarily theirs, and of
right the profits belonged to them.

But it is said that they violated a well known rule of equity in
dealing with themselves, that they were trustees, and that they
were representing both sides of the contract.

The answer is, that they did not find anybody else to deal with.
They could not find any one who would take the chances of build-
ing a road through what was then an almost uninhabited country,
and accept the bonds and stock of the road in payment. And
when it is said they were trustees, if they did occupy such rela-
tion, it was merely technical, for they represented only their own
interests on both sides, there being no one else concerned in the
transaction. They became the incorporators of the Company that
was to build the road, subscribed for its stock, and were the only
subscribers. Therefore it is difficult to see how any one was
wronged by their action. The rule of equity invoked, which has
its origin in the injunction, no man can serve two masters, cer-
tainly did not apply to them, because they were acting in their own
interest, and were not charged with the duty of caring for others'

rights, there being no other persons interested in tlie subject
matter.

To perfect the railroad system of the West Coast, for military
and postal uses, to serve the people in the northern part of the
State, and to make a connection at Portland, which became neces-
sary for the protection of the Central Pacific after aid had been
given to the Northern Pacific, the promoters of the Central
Pacific incorporated the California and Oregon, to run from a
point on the main line of the Central Pacific, known as Rose-
ville, to the northern boundary of the State of California, with
such extension into the State of Oregon as its directors might
afterwards deem proper.

By an Act of Congress, entitled '' An Act to grant lands to
" aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from
" the Central Pacific in California to Portland in Oregon," there
was granted to this Company, to secure the safe and speedy
transmission of the mails, troops and munitions of war and public
stores over said line of railroad, every alternate section of public
land, not mineral, designated by odd numbers, to the amount of
twenty alternate sections per mile, ten on each side of said rail-
road line'.

The directors of this Company proceeded with the work of
construction to the State line, expecting to connect with the road
of the " Oregon and California Company," which was commenced
at the City of Portland, and was intended to connect with the Cen-
tral Pacific at the California line ; but owing to the failure of the
original promoters and their successors it was not completed until
it came into its present ownership. This work of enormous diffi-
culty and cost has at last been achieved, thus giving connection
by rail between the Cities of San Francisco and Portland, and
direct railroad communication between Puget Sound and the
City of Mexico.

We do not want to interrupt this branch of the argument by
indulging at this moment in reflection on the benefit and ad-
vantage of the efforts of these men to the United States. It is
just twenty-five years since the passage of the Act of 1862, when
thinking and intelligent men scoffed at the idea that a road could
be constructed or operated over the wastes between the Missouri
and the Sacramento. But the efforts of these men demonstrated

that such a thing was practicable ; and there are now live separate
lines connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific.

But in addition, the efforts of the same men have served to con-
nect our great forests and ship building facilities of the Northern
Pacific with the former capital of the Aztecs. The efforts of these
men have brought the Capital of the Nation very close to the
Territory of Alaska, and proved the wisdom of the purchase recom-
mended by that foremost statesman of our time, Governor Seward ;
and we can now visit, explore and enjoy that wonderful country
which, less than ten years ago, we deemed to be a terra incognita,
and add to our wealth by engaging in its fisheries or the develop-
ment of its mines.

We do not think vre go beyond the limits of our position,
when we inquire whether the few aged men, who have produced
this result, are not worthy of some greater recognition than the
persecution they seem to have been subjected to at the hands of
the Executive and Legislative Departments of this Nation, ever
since it became apparent that they would succeed in the full per-
formance of their contract made with the United States, to con-
nect, by a* railroad, the waters of the Missouri with those of the
Pacific.

The road between Niles and Oakland, already spoken of, was
consolidated with the Western Pacific. The Western Pacific and
the Central Pacific were then consolidated into a new corporation,
and with the new corporation there was consolidated the San
Francisco, Oakland and Alameda Railroad Company, which had
been formed by the amalgamation of the San Francisco and
Oakland and the San Francisco and Alameda — and the San
Joaquin Valley Railroad Company and the California and Oregon
Railroad Company, under the name of The Central Pacific Rail-
road Company.

The stock of the original Central Pacific Railroad Company of
California, of the Western Pacific, of the San Francisco Bay
Railroad Company, of the San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda
Railroad Company, of the San Joaquin Valley Railroad Company,
and of the California and Oregon Railroad Company, were retired
and exchanged for $51,373,700 of the stock of the new Central
Pacific Railroad Company :

For the stock of the Central Pacific of California, . $40,570,100

For the stock of the Western Pacific, . . . 7,900,000

For the stock of the California and Oregon, . . 1,838,300

For the stock of the San Joaquin Valley, . . 305,000
For the stock of the San Francisco, Oakland and

Alameda, 760,300

The entire capital stock of the last mentioned consolidated
Company being the same as that of the Central Pacific Railroad
Company of California, one hundred millions.

None of the roads consolidated with the Central Pacific of
California have ever been a burden on the earnings of the main
line ; and the policy of consolidation, to put them all under one
management, and run them all in one system, was certainly wise
management in saving cost of superintendence, and, to some ex-
tent, of motive power and equipment.

If we may judge from the questions put by the Commissioners to
witnesses that appeared before them, they were under the impres-
sion that these different lines were represented by too much of the
capital stock. As we have heretofore said, that is a matter which
concerned only the stockholders, and no bona fide stockholder has
been heard to complain. All those who own stock at present,
bought in view and with the full knowledge of what had been
issued, and the purposes for which it had been issued. And cer-
tainly, from the position that the Government occupies in this
matter, it has no cause of complaint.

The surplus earnings were divided among the stockholders, and
whether those earnings were divided upon the basis of an issue of
fifty millions instead of five millions, does not in any way inter-
fere with the rights or the security of the Government.

After this consolidation various roads were built by the di-
rectors of the Central Pacific, through one or other of the Con-
struction Companies. Many of them were leased to the Central
Pacific, but as the result shows, as heretofore stated, at a net
profit of something over ten millions. All such roads have been
feeders to the main line or aided road. So that, in this respect, as
iu all the other acts of the Company, the position of the Govern
ment has not been damaged.

The only work undertaken by ^the directors of the Central
Pacific which has in any way withdrawn any of the revenues
7

from the aided road has been the construction of the Southern
Pacific, which they were forced to undertake in consequence of
the legislation of Congress providing for such a road, and which,
if they had not undertaken it, would have resulted much more
disastrously to the revenues of the Central Pacific, as we state
hereafter, and as the testimony before the Commission shows, that
unless the directors of the Central Pacific Road had concluded to
undertake its construction for the purpose of protecting the
earnings of the Central, the Government would have guaranteed
or endorsed eighty or one hundred million of the bonds of the
corporation represented by the late Thomas A. Scott, to be used
in such construction.

XI.

Purchase of the Stock of the California Pacific Railroad.

The California Pacific Railroad formed the shortest line from
"Sacramento to San Francisco. It was a distance of eighty-five
miles, as compared with 137, the route of the Western Pacific via
Oakland, and as against 177 miles on the Western Pacific, by way
of San Jose, with the impediment on this line of a grade of ninety-
two feet to the mile, a short distance south of San Francisco.

The testimony of Mr. Jackson, the former President of the Cali-
fornia Pacific, shows that passengers coming from points east of
Sacramento, ticketed to San Francisco by the Western Pacific,
would abandon the coupons for transportation from Sacramento,
and would buy tickets over the California Pacific, thereby saving
about three hours time, and about fifty miles in distance.

The California Pacific, as Mr. Jackson also tells us, was engaged
in the year 1871 in seeking aid of prominent capitalists in London
and Frankfort, to incorporate a Company, and furnish means to
build irom Marysville, a point on its line, by way of the Beckwith
Pass, to a connection with the Union Pacific. It was from these
circumstances that the promoters and directors of the Central
Pacific thought it to their interests, and to the interests of their
creditors, and among them the Government of the United States,
to secure the control of this line.

They did not use any money belonging to the Government for
such purpose. They did not in any way impair the lien of the

Government upon the aided road. The public had already adopted
that line as the most convenient and satisfactory mode of
transit between the political and the financial capital of the State;
and, apart from the danger to the financial success of the entire
main line aided by the Government, it was the part of wisdom to
control the shorter transit, to give those who came from points
east of Sacramento the benefit of the shorter route to their desti-
nation, San Francisco.

At the time of this purchase, passengers over the California
Pacific were taken by rail to Vallejo, and from there to San Fran-
cisco by steamer. The directors of the Central Pacific improved
this route, by building a branch line to Benecia, using a ferry from
that point to the shores of Contra Costa County, and by rail to
Oakland, so as to make the transportation from Ogden to Oakland
without change of cars, decreasing the time of travel over one
hour.

These accommodations and the saving of time resulted, as do all
such improvements of travel, in an increase of business, and in that
way the aided lines were benefited. Certainly they did not
sustain any damage.

This road was leased to the Central Pacific, certainly not to
the disadvantage of the Government, if we are to give any cre-
dence to the wailings and lamentations of the owners of a minority
of the stock. The lease was a financial benefit to the Central
Pacific corporation, while it was just and fair to the lessors.

The advantages of this course will be further illustrated, if
another trans-continental road should enter California to compete
for through business to San Francisco. Even so far as the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe has penetrated into California,
running cars as it does by arrangement with the Southern Pacific
to Oakland, the advantages of controlling the California Pacific in
the saving of time are already manifest. The Government, by its
actions, has testified to the wisdom of this purchase, by its very
properly directing that the mails for San Francisco be transported
over the California Pacific, instead of by the longer route over the
aided "Western Pacific.

XII.

Diverting Traffic from aided to non-aided Lines.

It is said that traffic has been diverted from the aided to the
non-aided roads. That is true only in one case, and for that the
Government, and not the directors, is responsible.

As to the roads built in California that are not included in
the system of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, all have
tended to increase the earnings of the aided line ; and this is also
true of such business as the Southern Pacific gathers in California,
and delivers to the Central Pacific at Goshen.

But, as we say, the diversion of the through business from the
aided line to the Southern Pacific is not the fault of the Central
Pacific. The Government forced this property on the promoters
of the Central Pacific. It subsidized the line, provided it was
built within a certain time, and it must have known that if two
roads were- to do the transportation business for the limited
population upon the Pacific coast, the one would necessarily
divert patronage from the other.

We say, that the Government forced this road upon the Central
Pacific. When the Central Pacific was first completed from
Sacramento to Ogden, it was in a crippled financial condition. It
had, from the great difficulties of construction, and from the con-
dition of the markets for labor and materials at the time at which
it was constructed, and from the unparalleled haste of such con-
struction, spent enough money in said construction to have paid
for the building of two such roads.

The testimony of the contractors and employees who did the
work of construction from Newcastle to Ogden is, that that
road could have been constructed five years after its completion
for about thirty per cent, of the money that it cost. Seventy
cents out of every dollar expended was the cost of the great
speed with which it was built, and of the war prices of material
and the Government tax thereon.

The Central Pacific could not avail itself of the cheaper markets
of the world. It could not buy its iron in Wales or Belgium.
It could not ship its material to San Francisco under a foreign
flag. It was forced to purchase American rails at an average of

over eighty dollars per ton, instead of English rails at an average,
including duty, of fifty dollars a ton. It was forced to pay $17.50
freight from New-York to San Francisco, when it could have
shipped for less than $10 from Cardiff to San Francisco. It was
forced to pay a war insurance for goods shipped under the American
flag as high as 17 per cent., when it could have obtained the same
guarantee for goods shipped under the English flag for less than
three per cent. It paid to the Government on many of the locomo-
tives purchased, a war tax of $960. It paid for two engines that it
was forced to buy in an emergency, so that the work of construc-
tion might not be delayed, $70,752. The first ten engines that it
bought cost upward of $191,000; the second ten upward of
$215,000.

The freight via Cape Horn on the first locomotive purchased
by the Company was $2,282.25. By reason of certain material
being delayed in coming around Cape Horn it was compelled to ship
some locomotives across the Isthmus of Panama. It paid freight
on one locomotive $8,100. On a shipment of eighteen locomotives
by the same route it paid as transportation charges, $84,886.80,
being $4,692 each.

Such examples might be continued indefinitely, but they are
sufficient to show why the Central Pacific was, as I have stated,
financially crippled when its last spike was driven.

If the California Pacific had proceeded unchecked with its
scheme to connect with the Union Pacific by way of Beckwith
Pass, it would have made such connection certainly for less than
fifty cents on the dollar of the bonded and aided debt of the
Central Pacific. And it was this knowledge, joined to the ad-
vantages the Central Pacific expected to derive in its local traffic
Jrom acquisition of a majority of the capital stock of that Com-
pany, that induced the promoters of the Central Pacific to ac-
quire it.

And so with the Southern Pacific. With the easier grades upon
that route, the aided roads were in no condition to stand the con-
test with the Southern Pacific Railroad in adverse possession, nor
could they take the risk of allowing it to be built by Mr. Scott,
or others in the interest of the Pennsylvania Railroad, with
moneys furnished by the Government.

It was not a choice for the Central Pacific, whether it would
construct this channel for the diversion of business from the

Central Pacific. Had it not done so, it would have been con-
structed by the Pennsylvania Road or its allies.

In evidence of our statement, that the Central Pacific was
financially crippled, we refer to the debate that took place before
the House Committee on Pacific Railroads, during the session of
1875. Thomas A. Scott, then President of the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company, appeared before that Committee, seeking
further aid for the Texas Pacific, so that it might build its road
into California. Mr. Huntington, on behalf of the Central Pacific,
opposed this project, and told the Committee that the Central
Pacific was bound to build this road for its own protection. Mr.
Scott retorted, that they could not build it, that their finances
were in a desperate condition, that they were carrying a floating
debt of fourteen millions.

Although Mr. Scott's statement was somewhat extravagant, it
was so near the truth as to be far from pleasant to those who were
representing the Central Pacific.

If the Southern Pacific had been operated as a rival road from
the time of its completion, there would not have been any net
earnings of the Central Pacific.

With such a competitor, it is more than doubtful whether the
Central Pacific would pay operating expenses and fixed charges.

But by the course adopted, the Central Pacific has controlled
this great element of danger, and has kept the aided roads in good
condition, financially and physically, and they never were in better
condition than they are to-day to perform the contract with the
Government under which aid was obtained, keeping its road in a
state of usefulness, at all times ready to yield all the service to the
Government in the transportation of troops, munitions of war,
public stores and the mails, whenever the Government felt that it
could afford to pay for the services of a first-class road, instead of
sending its business around Cape Horn or through a foreign terri-
tory.

The Commissioner of Railroads, in his report dated September
13th, 1887, says:

I inspected the road and its principal branches in June and July. This
property, including track, road-bed, bridges, culverts, station buildings,
workshops and tools, was in excellent condition. The ditches are ample,
road-bed well raised, and ties and rails accurately and firmly laid. In the
extensive and well equipped shops at Sacramento any work can be done that

a first, class railroad can require, and those at Carlin and Wadsworth are
placed and equipped to make repairs becoming necessary on the road.
There is a good library at each station.

We leave this branch of the inquiry by saying, that in every act
of the directors of the Central Pacific, whether in connection with
the business of that Company directly, or whether as promoters-
or directors of local lines, they have not been the cause in any
way of diverting business from the aided line, or in any way in-
juring the position of the Government.

And we say further, without fear of successful contradiction, that
every invasion of the contract made between that Company and
the Government, whether we review the contract by the terms of
the Act of 1862, or the Amended Act of 1864, or by the spoliation
of the Company under the Act of May 7th, 1878, known as the
Thurman bill — every departure from the terms of that contract,
whether implied or expressed, has been on the part of the Govern-
ment of the United States.

It granted in aid of the construction of the road the land spe-
cified in the Act of 1864 ; but it has prevented the Company from
enjoying the benefit of the grant, by refusing to issue patents for
the land, and the Company is now claiming that it has been dam-
aged by such refusal to the extent of at least $500,000. It kept
back a considerable amount of the aid-bonds after the road was
being operated as a through line, on the ground that it was not
completed according to the terms of the contract ; but it forced
the Company to pay it five per cent, on its net earnings, though
by the terms of the Act of 1862 such per centage was not paya-
ble until after the road was completed. By retaining these bonds
it forced the Company to borrow money to the amount that such
bonds would have produced, and to pay for such loans interest
ranging from twelve to fifteen per cent, per annum.

It has refused its transportation to the Company, and has ac-
tually paid more for the service than the amount at which it
would have been performed by the Company. It has had its
mails, troops, munitions of war and public stores transported over
non-aided lines within the control of the Central Pacific Railroad
Company, and has refused to pay for such service even after the
Supreme Judicial Tribunal of the nation has pronounced that the
Company^was entitled to such payment.

We do not know that the times are propitious to obtain a fair or
equitable construction of this contract by any of the departments
ot the Government, other than the judicial. And it becomes
every citizen of the United States to congratulate himself, that
there is one department of his Government upon which he can
rely ; that there is one tribunal that is governed by certain fixed
principles, and is not swayed by the political passions or interests
of the hour; although it may require an amendment to the Consti-
tution to force the other Departments of the Government to yield
obedience to its mandates.

If the relations that exist between these railroad companies
and the Government are to be used by the party in power
to perpetuate itself, or by the party out of power to dis-
possess its opponent, then no decisive result will ever be ob-
tained, no satisfactory solution will ever be arrived at in any dis-
cussion of the question between the Executive and Legislative
Departments of the Government and its contractors, the Union
and the Central Pacific Railroad Companies.

In all the testimony gathered by the various examining officers
of the Government, derived either from the books and accounts of
these railroad companies, or by oral examination of their friends
or enemies, and in all that may be reported from the unauthor-
ized and illegal inquiry under the auspices of the Commission
appointed by the President, in pursuance of the Act of March 3d,
1 887, not one tittle of evidence has been introduced, or will be
found, to impeach the correctness of the conduct of either of these
Companies in their relations toward the Government.

We go further, and say on behalf of the Central Pacific, that you
cannot charge the managers of this road with any act that would
not be sustained by the Courts, in the conduct of a guardian
towards his ward.

The characters of the presiding officers of the Union and Central
Pacific Railroad Companies are the equals of those of any citizen.
There are no two men, in their public and private life, more actu-
ated by honest and worthy motives, than Charles Francis Adams
and Leland Stanford ; and if ever their acts and intentions are
weighed by any impartial tribunal, they will be found to be in ac-
cord with the high character they bear.

Mr. Stanford was the first Republican Governor of California.
He was its " war" Governor. And he did more than any other man

within the State of California, by his firm, intelligent and wise ac-
tion as Governoi*, in preventing strife and bloodshed during the
^arly days of the rebellion, and keeping the State true to the
Union. As was said by Mr. Campbell, of Pennsylvania :
"" Thanks to the loyal people of California, Oregon and Washing-
ton, toe have not been called upon to quell rebellion on the shores
of the Pacific."

The opinion of the Legislature of California, as to the services
and character of Mr. Stanford, was expressed after his term of
office as Governor had expired, in the following resolution,
adopted by both houses of the Legislature by unanimous concur-
rence :

" No. 3. Concurre?it resolution, adopted December \5th, 1863:
"Resolved, By the Assembly, the Senate concurring, that the
i( thanks of the people are merited and are hereby tendered to Le-
" land Stanford, for the able, upright and faithful manner in
" which he has discharged the duties of the office of Governor of
" the State of California for the past two years.'''' (Statutes of
California, 1863-64, p. 542.)

When the men who are controlling these two Companies come
to Congress with the statement, that in a contract they have
made with the Government they have been wronged, that there
are equities in their favor which should be considered : when they
say they entered into a contract with the Government, in which
certain things were expressed, and that between the lines of that
contract more was implied, and that effect should be given to the
implied as well as the express terms of the contract, they are, at
least, entitled to a respectful and impartial hearing by the repre-
sentatives of the people. They should not have the doors of the
inquiry chamber closed in their faces. They should not be made
the victims of unreasonable or unconstitutional legislation.

The legislative department has not been ordained by our Con-
stitution, or by any principle of natural right or justice, to con-
strue a contract to which the Government is a party.

As was said by Mr. Hamilton in his celebrated communication
to the Senate, under date of January 20th, 1795 :

When the Government enters into a contract with an individual it deposes,
as to the matter of the contract, its constitutional authority, and exchanges

the character of legislator for that of a moral agent, with the same rights
and obligations as an individual.

Its promises may be justly considered as excepted out of its power to legis-
late, unless in aid of them. It is in theory impossible to reconcile the idea
of a promise which obliges, with a power to make a law which shall vary
the effect of it. (3d Hamilton's Works, pages 518, 519.)

Our fathers, and they were wise men in their generation, left
the contests between the governing power and the governed to
the calm, placid and mediating equity of the courts provided by
the Constitution.

The constructors of the Central Pacific say : We entered into
a contract to assist in the performance of a national undertaking,
which was supposed and declared at the time to be an impossi-
bility ; we risked the results of our labors for two score or more
of years in aiding the Government to reclaim the territory between
the Missouri and the Sacramento and to more effectually guard its
Pacific possessions ; we put into it our worldly substance and
risked our lives by exposure to the elements amidst the rigorous
winters of the Sierra Nevadas, to carry out in good faith the
contract we had made, and to do it in half the time allotted.
We come now and say to you that in making that contract we re-
lied on your statement, that you would give to these two roads the
patronage of the Government, which had averaged for many years
not less than $7,300,000, and which you expected would largely
increase in the future ; and that the revenue from this source we
expected, and as you expected, and as was so announced in
the debates in Congress, would cover the credit which you ad-
vanced to us, and the interest that you were to pay for our use of
such credit; and we say that you have so far fallen short in your
contract with us as to render to us your business amounting to
but one-tenth part of the promised compensation, and although
you agreed to pay us for doing all your business reasonable
and fair compensation, and the same rates paid to us by our other
patrons, yet that you have so far disregarded your obligations in the
premises as to keep from us all the transportation you controlled
which you could ship by any other line, not even giving to
us the preference at the same prices ; and we show you that by
our efforts and the use of our capital you have already saved by
the performance of our contract, and retained in your Treasury
over $139,000,000; and in the language of the General com-

manding your armies, the Indian as a problem has been ob-
literated from army tactics, by reason of opening the vast ter-
ritory between the Missouri and the Sacramento to settlement
and civilization ; all of which has been accomplished by the due
fulfillment of our part of the contract entered into with you.

When we come to you, as the governing power of the nation,
to represent these facts, and the advantages which you enjoy, and
will continue to enjoy, we say they are matters which should
engage your earnest attention, and we ought not to be met
with vituperation or invective.

XIII.

Influencing Legislation.

The Commission appointed under the Act of Congress of March
3d, 1887, were charged to inquire —

What amount of money or other valuable consideration, such as stock>
bonds, passes, &c, have been expended or paid out by said Companies,
whether for lawful or unlawful purposes, but for which sufficient and de-
tailed vouchers have not been given or filed with the records of said
Company ?

This branch of the inquiry forms question No. 20, which the
Commissioners printed and sent to the officers of Companies which
had received aid from the United States.

Mr. Stanford, President of the Central Pacific, made answer in
writing, as follows :

In answer to interrogatory No. 20, I have to say, that the Company, in its
settlement with the Government, proposes to claim nothing as expenses in
determining the net earnings in which the Government has an interest, for
which the Company does not furnish full and satisfactory vouchers. It is
entirely immaterial to the Government, and the Government can have no
interest in knowing what amount of money has been expended for which the
vouchers on file are not sufficient in detail or otherwise. I would, however,,
remark, that all items of expenditure, for which detailed vouchers are not on
file, have from time to time been approved by the directors and stockholders
of the Company.

Question 21 of the printed questions reads:

Further to inquire and report whether said Companies, or either of them, or

their officers or agents, have paid any money or other valuable consideration,
or done any other act or thing for the purpose of influencing legislation.

Mr. Stanford answered the question as follows:

In answer to interrogatory No. 21, I have to say, in behalf of the Central
Pacific Railroad Company, that no deduction will be made from that portion
of the net earnings belonging to the United States, on account of any expen-
diture for which detailed and satisfactory vouchers are not furnished. We
will account to the Government as if no such expenditures had been made.

On the oral examination of Mr. Stanford by the Commission,
vouchers for money paid to him by the Company were shown to
him, and he was asked by the Chairman of the Commission to
explain.

The examination took the following form :

" Q. Mr. Stanford, will you please look at the voucher, and ex-
plain to the Commission, in detail, the character of the expendi-
ture covered by the amount named in the bill ?"

this voucher was February 7th, 1876, and it was
for general expenses to December 31st, 1875.]

Mr. Stanford examined the voucher for some time, and was
asked by his counsel :

Q. Have you any recollection of the contents of that voucher?

A. No, sir; I don't remember. I presume it is made up of a
great many items, but I have no recollection of this particular
voucher.

The, Chairman. — Q. How did you make up that sum?

A. Well, except they have my voucher, I could not tell, because
I don't remember. But I used to pay out money for the Com-
pany, one way and the other, and after a time I would pass in
my accounts, or rather, my vouchers, and it would be made up by
somebody connected with the office, presented and allowed tome ;
and I presume this is one of that kind.

Q. Have you any accounts, showing any detailed statement,
from which you took that sum of money, in order to give a
voucher to the Company ?

A. None at all.

Q. For what purpose would you make expenditures ?

A. Well, I can tell you generally. Our accounting offices for
a long time were at Sacramento, and I used to be in San Fran-
cisco doing business for the Company, a great deal of the time.
In those days I borrowed money, paid out interest, renewed notes,
and sometimes paid commissions for large amounts. Everything
I paid out for the interest of the Company would be made up
and presented, and I would be credited for the aggregate.

Q. Did you make any explanation to the Company, at the time
that you presented the voucher ?

A. I have no doubt that I did.

Q. What explanation did you give to the Company ?

A. Well, as I don't remember the items of the voucher, I can-
not remember, of course, the explanation I may have given to the
Company. I don't think I went into details. I think I said I
found it necessary to expend, in the general interest of the Com-
pany, so much, and I do not think that they ever questioned me
particularly as to the wisdom of the expenditures.

Q. Was any part of the $171,000, the sum named in this bill
that I have handed to you, and which you have paid, expended
for the purpose of influencing legislation ?

Mr. Cohen, of counsel for the Central Pacific, said : " We object
to the question, for the reason that the witness says he does not
remember what constituted the items composing this voucher.
For that reason, we advise him to decline answering further ques-
tions with respect to this voucher. Our advice is also founded
upon the fact, that the Company is willing to account to the Gov-
ernment for its proportion of any voucher that is produced, or any
entry upon the books that is unexplained, and, therefore, we can-
not see that it will make any difference what the Company did
with the money, whether it threw it into the sea, or wasted it in
any manner or form ; and speaking for myself, as counsel, and be-
lieving that I express the views of my clients, I say that I regard
these questions as simply seeking to pander to a public scandal,
and that they cannot have any bearing upon the purposes or ob-
jects entrusted to this Commission."

By the Chairman :

Q. I repeat my question : Was any part of the sum named in
the voucher submitted to you paid to any agent or individual for
the purpose of influencing legislation ?

Before the witness made answer, the Chairman said :

" If you don't know it you can answer the question."

A. I told you, I don't know anything about this ; but then I
shall act upon the advice of my counsel. I do not suppose it can
make any possible difference so long as we account for the money.
The Government cannot have any more than the money, and the
Company is willing to account for that, if you are not satisfied
with the vouchers.

Q. Do you decline to answer my question ?

A. Under the advice of counsel, I do, any further than I have
answered it.

The witness further said :

" I state that I never corrupted or sought to corrupt any mem-

ber of any Legislature, or any member of Congress, or any public
official, nor have I ever authorized or allowed any agent of mine
so to do."

It is in evidence before the Commission, that all the expendi-
tures made by Mr. Stanford, for which there are no detailed
vouchers, have been approved by the Board of Directors and
atified by the stockholders.

Now it will be seen, that the witness, being examined twelve
years after the money had been expended, having no recollection
of the purpose of the expenditure, was, by the action of this
Board, pretending to exercise judicial functions, forced into the
position of being compelled, under the advice of his counsel, to
decline further reply.

It may be said, that it appeared when the matter was sub-
mitted to the Circuit Court of the United States, upon the appli-
cation of the Commission to compel the witness to answer, that
this particular voucher had already been scrutinized by the
Government Auditor of Railroad Accounts ; that he had refused
to allow it as a proper deduction from the gross earnings of the
Company, and that in settling with the Government the amount
of this voucher was treated as money on hand, and the United
States received its proportion, which was covered into the Federal
Treasury in the manner provided by law.

The questions put by the Commission were calculated to put
this witness in a false position. He had sworn he could not re-
collect the purposes for which the sum of money, or any part of it,
represented by this voucher, had been expended, and when, disre-
garding the truthfulness of his reply, he was asked whether any por-
tion of it had been spent for the purpose of influencing legislation,
the counsel representing him would have been untrue to their
duty if they had not assumed the responsibility and advised him
to decline to answer further.

But an answer to the question which the counsel advised this
witness not to make was really contained in his first reply, that
he did not remember the purposes for which this money had been
expended.

"Influencing legislation" has a wide and diverse meaning.
Every American, who cares for his birthright, and who under-

takes to perform the duties of citizenship, influences legislation
when he declares his preference for one candidate for a legislative
office ahove another. His neighbor, who goes forth to represent
him in the local Legislature or in Congress, to whom he has stated
his views on the current questions of the day, which will form
the subject of enactment, is influenced in his course by such ex-
pression, and in this way, every voter for a successful candidate
may be said to influence legislation.

It is the right and the duty of every citizen to influence legisla-
tion ; and the more interested he is in the subject matter, the
higher becomes the duty to use his influence to obtain such laws
as his necessities justly demand. The duly of determining upon
the propriety of a proposed statute, is with the legislative body.

As the necessities arise for interfering in legislative acts, the
purpose of which is not announced before a Legislature meets,
and as the persons interested in such subject may be distant
from the State House, or from the National Capital, it is proper
to employ agents, who reside at the Capital of the State or of
the Nation, to represent those who may be interested in the
enactments proposed.

The payment of money to influence legislation may be made
with the most perfect propriety. Effective service by intelligent
agents, cannot be procured gratuitously before a legislative de-
partment more than before the judicial department.

In England the business of parliamentary agents is recognized
and respected. Those having business with the Legislature of
Great Britain are represented by agents, just as suitors in Court
are represented by counsel; and although the business of agents
of this character in this country is not as highly esteemed as in
England, it would be better for the community if it were so.

There is no more valid reason why one should not properly
employ an agent to promote the passage or defeat of a pending
measure than that he should be debarred from the employment of
counsel to prosecute or defend in a Court of justice.

It is said that the Central Pacific has disbursed a large sum
for such service.

It was proved before the Commission that the parliamentary cost
of explaining to Committees and obtaining the neessary legislation
for the Brighton Railway averaged over . £4,800 per mile.
Of the Manchester and Birmingham, . . 5,000 " "

100

Of the Blackwall Railway, .... £14,400 per mile.
That the solicitors' bills for the Southeastern

Railway was a total of ... £240,000

The expenditures of the Central Pacific are insignificant, as
compared with the cost of the same services required for obtaining
the necessary legislation from the English Parliament Rut what-
ever amount has been spent by the Central Pacific for the purpose
of influencing legislation, the Government is the responsible cause
for the largest portion of such expenditure. Long before the last
rail was laid, and continuously since, this Company has been
subjected to the most nagging and ceaseless persecution at the
hands of the officers of the various Departments and of Congress.
And it has been to ward off the hostile effects of such adverse
action that this Company has been compelled to employ agents
and attorneys to explain their true position to officers of the
Departments and to members of Congress, and the necessity for
such expenditure has recurred with every change in the incumbents
of the different Departments and their subordinates, and with the
election of each Congress.

Take the case in hand. The witness, Mr. Stanford, is President
of a railroad system extending from Portland, Oregon, to the Salt
Lake Valley, and from the City of San Francisco to the City of
New-Orleans, covering a distance of nearly five thousand miles.

The interests of the corporations he represents are liable to be
the subject of legislative enactments in the States of Oregon,
California and Nevada, and in the Territories of Utah, Arizona
and New-Mexico, and the States of Texas and Louisiana; and the
net earnings of the whole system are liable to be controlled by
the by-laws, resolutions and ordinances passed in every county
and every municipality in each one of those States and Territories
through which any portion of this railroad system may penetrate,
and the interests of all such corporations, and especially of the
Central Pacific, are liable to be seriously affected by the legislation
in Congress and by the rules adopted for the government of the
different executive Departments with which these Railroad Com-
panies have business.

It therefore becomes the duty of the President or managers of
such Companies to watch and to influence the legislation of all

101

these tribunals, that the corporate interests may not be adversely
affeoted.

It is just as much the duty of the managers or directors of a
corporation to do this, as it is to defend any action that may be
brought against it, and for such purpose to employ and pay for
the services of intelligent agents, to protect it against hostile
legislation, as it would be to employ and pay for the services of
counsel, learned in the law, to protect it against an unjust judg-
ment.

To defeat proposed unjust and hostile legislation, a resort must
be had to the services of those who are not known to be in the
employment of the corporation whose interests they guard.

The plans and purposes of the authors of drastic measures
would not become known to the directors of the corporation, if
their agents heralded their employment.

Corporations, like governments, must work with secret agents,
and when the business of such an agent becomes public, his use-
fulness is at an end.

To have informed the Commission of all the agents employed
by the corporation under the management of this witness, would
have put in peril the further prosecution of its business, both
physical and financial.

Some portions of the road, operated by the Central and South-
ern Companies, are run through districts where the safe passage
of a train is subject to the same risk of interference as a stage
used to be on our frontier lines. There are men banded together
in the territories to rob the mails and treasure in transit. We
could not, with any safety, name the men employed in the pre-
vention or detection of these acts.

We have agents also to guarantee to us the faithfulness
and to warn us of the unfaithfulness of various classes of em-
ployees. Their discharge from our service must necessarily
follow the rendering of their names. The most important in-
formation that all corporations of this character receive must
of necessity come through secret agents. The names of the
attorneys who appear before Committees or Courts are well
known, but it is not with that class that the Commission were
concerned.

To accomplish these results there must be in the employ
of the corporation well trained special agents, and money must

102

be disbursed for their remuneration. In the conduct of public
affairs a fund for this purpose is usually provided by the Legisla-
tive Department to be used by the Executive.

Such a fund has been entrusted to the Chief Magistrate of the
Nation, and to the Governor of every State since the formation of
our Government ; and the man who controls the operation of the
millions of capital represented by four or five thousand miles of
railroad and the financial interests of its owners must have a like
fund. It is in the interest not only of the stockholders of such
corporations, but of the public, to confide it to him.

It is not out of place to say that the man whose honor was
sought to be impugned possesses without regard to political parties
tin- confidence of the people of the State of California, of which
he has been Governor, and which he is now representing as a
Senator in Congress.

We have heretofore shown in the course of this argument that
the people of his State and of the Nation trusted him in perilous
times, and that he performed his high and arduous duties so as to
meet the approbation of the people and receive the thanks of the
Legislature. It is not claiming too much that every presumption
goes with him in the supposition that he expended any fund en-
trusted to him without violating any law of the State of which
he had been Chief Executive, or any Federal law which, as
Senator as well as citizen, it is his duty to uphold and protect.

In the history of our country quite unseemly exhibitions have
been witnessed before. The President of Congress was chal-
lenged to declare how much of the secret service fund had been
expended in enabling Mr. Franklin to make a loan from the
French Government for the use of the United States.

In England a faction of the House of Commons, following the
lead of an opposition paper, brought disgrace upon themselves
by challenging the Government to say how much of the secret
service fund had been used to aid Mr. Canning in his mission on
behalf of the Government to Portugal.

It will not do to assume, when a witness (of such a character as
this worthy Governor has shown himself to be) refuses to answer
a question, that such refusal is made to conceal improper or un-
worthy motives or actions.

When Sir John Campbell, afterwards Chief Justice of England,
and then Lord Chancellor, was defending Lord Melbourne, the

103

Prime Minister, from the charge of maintaining improper rela-
tions with Mrs. Norton, he said, it would be unfortunate if the
public mind became so debased as to imagine that when a man
and a woman came together, with the opportunity for misbe-
havior, they had availed themselves of the occasion. And so it
may be said, that.it is to be hoped that the public intelligence of this
country will not be so low as to believe that when the managers
of an immense corporation are forced to employ agents, or expend
money to prevent hostile legislation, they have made such expen-
diture in an unlawful or corrupt manner.

There is not a leading corporation in the country that has not
been forced to so protect itself.

There is not an intelligent person of mature age in this coun-
try who does not know that leading corporations, not only rail-
roads, but banks and insurers, would be severely mulcted by ad-
verse and ill-considered legislation, promoted by the worst class
in the community, who hang about legislative halls, unless effec-
tive measures were taken to prevent such results.

And, therefore, it is necessary to explain to members of Legis-
latures, the merits or demerits of any proposed bill before them,
seeking their sanction. Notwithstanding the vituperation, the
abuse, that it is the custom to heap upon our legislative representa-
tives with but few exceptions, they will be found disposed to act
in accordance with right and justice. Often because the measures
before them are not sufficiently explained, they are liable to come
to an erroneous conclusion.

The representatives of the people are a true reflex of those who
elect them, and, being informed of the merits of the case on which
their action is invited, may be trusted to reach as nearly a
right and intelligent solution as is possible for men called from
the various walks of life in dealing with subjects on which they
have had little or no experience.

It is a gross scandal on the American people, to assert that
money used to influence legislation finds its way into the pockets
of the men representing them in their Legislatures.

The present Executive of this nation, who performs his duties
so much to the satisfaction of the people of the country, but a few
months ago declined to inform the Senate of his reasons for
removing certain citizens from office. It would have been as
much out of character to have suspected him of unworthy motives,

104

in making such removal, as it is to ascribe them to this witness,
whose services to the public in the official positions he has held
have been as truly and faithfully performed.

XIV.

Disastrous Effects of the " Thurman Bill " on the Indebt-
edness of the Central Pacific to the Government.

By Sections 5 and 6 of the Act of July 1, 1862, Congress pro-
vided for the payment to the Government of the indebtedness of
the Central and Western Pacific Railroad Companies.

Section 5 reads:

To secure the repayment to the United States, as hereinafter provided, of
the amount of said bonds, so issued and delivered to said Company, together
with all interest thereon which shall be paid by the United States, the
issue of said bonds, and delivery to the Company shall ipso facto constitute a
first mortgage on the whole line of the railroad and telegraph, together with
the rolling stock, fixtures and property of every kind and description, and
in consideration of which said bonds may be issued.

Section 6 provides that :

The grants aforesaid are made upon condition that said Company shall
pay said bonds at maturity, and shall keep said railroad and telegraph line
in repair and use, and shall at all times transmit dispatches over said tele-
graph line, and transport mails, troops, munitions of war, supplies and
public stores upon said railroad for the Government whenever required to
do so by any Department thereof ; and that the Government shall, at all
times, have the preference of the use of the same for the purposes aforesaid,
at fair and reasonable rates of compensation, not to exceed the amount paid
by private parties for the same kind of service ; and all compensation for
services rendered for the Government shall be applied to the payment of
said bonds and interest, until the whole amount is fully paid, *****
and after said road is completed, until said bonds and interest are paid, at
least five per centum of the net earnings of said road shall also be annually
applied to the payment thereof.

This reservation of payment was changed by the Act of July
2, 1864, which provided:

That only one-half of the compensation for the services rendered to the
Government by said Companies shall be required to be applied to the payment
of bonds issued by the Government in aid of the construction of said road.

105

Prior to the passage of the Act of May 1, 1878, known as the
" Thurman Bill," it was contended by counsel for the Central
Pacific that the mortgage reserved by the Government under the
provisions of Section 5 of the Act of 1862, secured to it the
building and completion of the road, it being kept in constant
repair for efficient service, and the rendering of its use to the
Government whenever required for the transportation of its
mails, troops, munitions of war and public stores, and for the
payment of the indebtedness of the Company: first, under the
terms of the Act of 1862, by the amount of all the compensation
for services performed for the Government ; and, second, in the
manner provided by the change in the law of 1864, by the pay-
ment of one-half of the amount of compensation earned by such
service ; and, in both cases, by the payment of five per cent, of
the net earnings of the Company.

After the construction of the Union and Central Pacific roads,
it was seen that both Congress and the Companies had been
mistaken in their calculation of the amount that the transportation
done by the Companies for the Government would produce.
Instead of, as was contended by the Senators and Representatives
in the debates that preceded the passage of the Act of 1 862, and
its amendment in 1864, such transportation producing an amount
that would not only satisfy the interest to be paid, but would leave
a considerable sum in each year to constitute a sinking fund for
the redemption of the principal, it was found, that whilst the
business increased in volume, yet the rate of compensation being
so greatly reduced from the prices the Government had to pay
before the construction of the roads, that the Companies could
not and did not in any one year perform sufficient service to meet
the annual payment for interest.

As we have heretofore shown, the Government was, of course,
a large gainer by this mistake of the parties in their anticipation
of the results of the construction of these roads. The Government
had all the service that it required, performed at about one-tenth
of the charges they had paid before the road was built. Instead
of paying to the Companies such rates of compensation as they
had anticipated, they covered the difference into the Treasury, and
the Companies became its debtors for the difference between the
rates of transportation allowed and the amounts paid for interest
on the bonds.

106

An attempt was then made to force the Companies to repay to
the United States the interest on the bonds as the same was paid
by the Government, but the Supreme Court decided that the
Companies were under no obligation to refund to the United
States the interest paid before the maturity of the principal of the
bonds.

The point does not seem to have been made or suggested, that
the payment by the Companies of the interest or the principal of
these bonds in money was an afterthought, and that by the terms
of the contract, contained either in the Act of 1882 or the amend-
ment of 1864, they were obligated to pay only in services, and
without regard to time.

It became evident, from the transportation accounts between
the Companies and the Government, that the latter was paying in
ten years only about the amount they had anticipated paying in
one, and that such sums, joined to the five per cent, of the net
earnings, would never suffice to discharge the interest or principal
of said bonds, and that the total amount of such interest and
principal at the time the bonds matured would be far beyond the
ability of the Companies to pay.

It will not be forgotten, that during all the time, the only suf-
ferers were the Companies; the Government was losing nothing;
it was annually saving an amount sufficient to cover all the interest
it was paying, and enough more to cancel a portion of the bonds.
In other words, it was keeping to itself the money which, when it
made its contract with the Companies, it designed to pay them.
The Companies were keeping their contract with the Government
in good faith, with the result of being year by year brought more
deeply in its debt.

But Congress saw only the increase of this debt. It did not
regard the fact that the Companies were doing all and more than
they had agreed ; that the United States were reaping the entire
benefit of the contract, as designed by the representatives of the
people when it was made- — shut its eyes to the fact that nine-
tenths of the compensation which it had impliedly agreed to pay
to the Companies was being retained by the Treasury, and saw
only the science of its accounting officers in chalking up this tre-
mendous score against the other party to the contract. And so it
resolved, in defiance of law, contrary to the principles of quity
and fair dealing, ignoring the commonest rules of right and justice

107

that it would construe a right reserved to it in the contract, to
alter or amend it, to compel the Railroad Companies to pay the
principal and interest of these bonds in money instead of services,
and that they should commence doing this years before the debt
matured, and so that act of spoliation, known as the " Thurman
Bill," was added to the statute book on May 7, 1878.
That Act provides :

That the net earnings mentioned in the Act of 1862 shall be ascertained
by deducting from the gross amount of earnings the necessary expenses
actually paid within the year in operating the same, and keeping the
same in a state of repair, and also the sum paid within the year in
the discharge of interest on first mortgage bonds, whose lien has pri-
ority over the lien of the United States, and excluding from consider-
ation all sums owing or paid by said Companies respectively for interest
upon any other portion of the said indebtedness ; that there shall be estab-
lished in the Treasury of the United States a sinking fund, which shall be
invested in bonds of the United States, and the semi-annual interest thereof
shall be in like manner, from time to time, invested, and the same shall ac-
cumulate and be disposed of as hereinafter mentioned.

It further provides that :

There shall be carried to the credit of said fund, on the first day of
February in each year, the one-half of the compensation for services ren-
dered for the Government by said Central Pacific Railroad Company, not
applied in liquidation of interest ; and in addition thereto, said Company
shall on said day in each year pay into the Treasury, to the credit of said
sinking fund, the sum of twelve hundred thousand dollars, or so much
thereof as may be necessary to make the five per cent, of the net earnings of
its road, payable to the United States under said Act of 1862, and the whole
sum earned by it as compensation for services rendered the United States,
together with the sum by this section required to be paid, amounting in the
aggregate to twenty-five per cent, of the whole net earnings of said railroad,
ascertained and defined as hereinafter provided, for the year ending on the
31st day of December next preceding ; that the said sinking fund so estab-
lished and accumulated shall, at the maturity of such bonds, so respectively
issued by the United States, be applied to the payment and satisfaction
thereof, ******* and of all interest paid by the United States
thereon, and not re-imbursed, subject to the provisions of the next section.

The next section being —

That said sinking fund, so established and accumulated, shall * * * be
held for the protection, security and benefit of the lawful and just holders of
the mortgage lien debts of said Companies lawfully paramount to the rights
of the United States, and for the claims of other creditors, if any, lawfully
chargeable upon the funds so required to be paid into said sinking fund,

108

according to their respective lawful priorities, as well for the United States,
according to the principles of equity, to the end that all persons having any
claim upon said sinking fund may be entitled thereto in due order ; but the
provisions of this section shall not operate or be held to impair any existing
legal right, except in the manner in this Act provided, of any mortgage lien
or other creditor of any of said Companies respectively, nor to excuse any of
said Companies respectively from the duty of discharging out of their funds
its debts to any creditor except the United States.

It would seem that the construction to be given to the last
section of the Act of May 7, 1878, is, that the Government has
changed the contract for the payment of the principal and interest
of the bonds, by providing a fund from which they shall be paid ;
and that, on compliance with the terms of this Act, the Company
is not required to furnish any other mode of payment, nor, without
any change in the law, can the Government demand it.

The Companies did not assent to this change in the contract,
and resisted its validity, but the Supreme Court of the United
States, speaking through the Chief Justice, held, that

This Act establishes a sinking fund for the payment of the debts when
they mature, but does not pay the debts. The original contracts of loan are
not changed. All that has been done is, to make it the duty of the Company
to lay up a portion of its current net income to meet the debts when they do
fall due. That it is a matter of no consequence that the Secretary of the
Treasury is made a sinking fund agent, and the Treasury of the United
States the depositary, or that the investment is to be made in the public
funds of the United States. This does not make the deposit a payment of
the debt due the United States. * * * * * ft takes nothing from the
corporation or the stockholders which actually belongs to them. It oppresses no
one, and inflicts no wrong.

Mr. Justice Strong, dissenting, said :

In my opinion, the Act of Congress of May 7, 1878, is plainly transgressive
of legislative power. * * * It is as much beyond the power of a Legisla-
ture, under any pretence, to alter a contract into which the Government has en-
tered with a private individual as it is for any other party to a contract to change
its terms without the consent of the person contracting with him. As to its
contracts, the Government, in all its departments, has laid aside its sove-
reignty, and it stands on the same footing with private contractors.

Speaking of the contracts made by the Acts of 1862 and 1864,
Mr. Justice Strong says :

It is manifest that by this contract the Government acquired a vested right
to payment at the time and in the mode specified, and the Company acquired

109

a vested right to retain the consideration given for its assumption, that is, a
vested right to withhold payment until, by the terms of the Act, it became
due. The contract implied an agreement not to call for payment, or ad-
ditional security, before that time. There is no technicality about vested
rights. Most of them grow out of contracts, and no matter how they arise,
they are all equally sacred, equally beyond the reach of legislative inter-
ference. ****** There are other provisions of this Act intended
to enforce compliance with these newly added obligations imposed upon the
debtor. No one can deny that they materially change the contract of loan and
borrowing previously existing between the Government and the Railroad
Companies, and change it at the will of the creditor alone.

Mr. Justice Bradley, also dissenting, said :

I think that Congress had no power to pass the Act of May 7th, 1878.
The power of Congress, even over those subjects upon which it has the right
to legislate, is not despotic, but is subject to certain Constitutional limita-
tions. One of these is, that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or
property, without due process of law ; another is, that private property
shall not be taken for public use without j ust compensation ; and a third is,
that the judicial power of the United States is vested in the Supreme and
inferior Courts and not in Congress. It seems to me that the law in question
is violative of all these restrictions.

The contract between the Union and Central Pacific Railroad Companies
and the Government was an executed contract and a definite one. It was, in
effect, this : that the Government should loan the Companies certain moneys,
and that the Companies should have a certain period of time to repay the
amount, the loan resting on the security of the Companies' works. Congress,
by the law in question, without any change of circumstances, and against the
protest of the Companies, declares that the money shall be paid at an earlier
day, and that the contract shall be changed pro tanto. This is the substance
and effect of the law. Calling the money paid a sinking fund makes no
substantial difference. Congress takes up the question ex parte, discusses
and decides it, passes judgment, and proposes to issue execution, and to
subject the Companies to heavy penalties if they do not comply. That is the
plain English of the law. In view of the limitations referred to, has Congress
the power to do this? In my judgment, it has not.

It will not do to say that the violation of the contract by the law in question
is not a taking of property. In the first place, it is literally a taking of
property. It compels the Companies to pay over to the Government, or its
agents, money to which the Government is not entitled. flThat it will be
entitled by the contract to a like amount at some future time does not matter.
Time is a part of the contract. It is needless to refer to the importance to
the Companies of the time which the contract gives. If it be alleged that the
security of the Government requires this to be done in consequence of waste
or dissipation by the Companies of the mortgage security, that is a question
to be settled by judicial investigation, with opportunity of defence. A pre-
judgment of the question by the legislative department is a usurpation of the

110

judicial power. * * * * The power reserved to alter, amend and rej
the charter is not sufficient to authorize the passage of the law in question.

I will only add further, that the initiation of this species of legislation by
Congress is well calculated to excite alarm. It has the effect of announcing
to the world, and giving it to be understood, that this Government does not
consider itself bound by its engagements. It sets the example of repudiation of
Government obligations. It strikes a blow at the public credit. It asserts the
principle that might makes right. It saps the foundations of public morality.
Perhaps, however,- these are considerations more properly to be addressed to
the legislative discretion. But when forced upon the attention by what, in
my judgment, is an unconstitutional exercise of legislative power, they have
a more than ordinary weight and significance.

Mr. Justice Field said :

The decision will, in my opinion, create insecurity in the title to corporate
property in the country. It, in effect, determines that the General Govern-
ment, in its dealings with the Pacific Railroads, is under no obligation to
fulfill its contracts, and that whether it shall do so is a question of policy
and not of duty. The relation of the General Government to the Pacific
Companies is twofold : that of sovereign in its own territory, and that of con-
tractor. As sovereign, its power extends to the enforcement of such acts and
regulations by the Companies as will insure, in the management of their
roads and conduct of their officers in its territory, the safety, convenience
and comfort of the public. As a contractor it is bound by its engagements
equally with a private individual ; it cannot be relieved from them by any
assertion of its sovereign authority. ********** The
proposition of the Government the Central Pacific accepted, and filed its ac-
ceptance as required, and thereupon the provisions of the Act became a con-
tract between it and the United States, as complete and perfect as it could be
made by the most formal instrument.

^.By the Act of 1878, additional security is required for the ultimate pay-
ment of its own bonds, and the subsidy bonds of the United States, by the
creation of what is termed a sinking fund, that is, by compelling the Com-
pany to deposit $1,200,000 a year in the Treasury of the United States. It
is not material, in the view that I take of the subject, whether the deposit of
this large sum in the Treasury of the creditor be termed a payment, or
something else. It is the exaction from the Company of money for which
the original contract did not stipulate, which constitutes the objectionable
feature of the Act of 1878.

I cannot assent to a doctrine which would ascribe to the Federal Govern-
ment a sovereign right to treat as it may choose corporations with which it
deals, and would exempt it from that great law of morality which should
bind all Governments as it binds all individuals, to do justice and keep faith.

In the case at bar the contract with the Central Pacific is changed in essen-
tial particulars. The Company is compelled to accept it in its changed form,
and by legislative decree, without the intervention of the Courts. * *

Ill

* . *" ■ If the Government will not keep its faith, littlelbetter can be
expected from the citizen. If contracts are not observed, no property will
in the end be respected ; and all history shows that rights of person are un-
safe where property is insecure. Protection to one goes with protection to
the other ; and there can be neither prosperity nor progress where this
foundation of all just government is unsettled.

The moment, said the elder Adams, the idea is admitted into society that
property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of
law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

Under this law, which received such scathing denunciations
from three of the venerable and learned Judges of the Supreme
Court of the United States, the Central Pacific has paid into the
United States Treasury, up to December 31st, 1886, for the sink-
ing fund account, $3,168,650.50.

A portion of this sum has been invested by the Treasury,
against the earnest protest of the Central Pacific, in the purchase
of bonds issued in aid of the construction of the roads, known as
" Currency Sixes," at a premium of 34T2Jg- per cent. ; in other
words, the bonds which the Central Pacific sold at a discount of
about 30 per cent., to obtain money for the construction of its
road, the Government has purchased at a premium of nearly 35
per cent. ; that is, for each bond for which the Central Pacific re-
ceived $744.40, the Government, against its protest, has purchased
for its account, paying therefor $1,342.10.

The total loss to the Central Pacific, from this mode of handling
the sinking fund, up to this time, may be stated as follows:

Amount paid into the sinking fund, $3,168,650 50

Premium paid on bonds, .... $947,222 40

Premium received on bonds, $54,752 50

Interest received, . . . 320,006 72 374,759 22 572,463 18

Balance in fund, bonds and cash, $2,596,187 32

Interest that would have been earned by the

Company's investments to June 1st, 1887, . . $1,040,503 54

Balance of deficit to date by Government invest-
ment, 572,463 18

Loss to Central Pacific by United States sinking

fund investment, . . . . . . ..... $1,612,96672

112

If the money paid into the sinking fund had been left with the
Central Pacific and allowed to earn, and it had been earning six
per cent, per annum, there would to-day be in the sinking fund
$1,612,966. 72 more than there is.

There are no present obligations imposed on these Companies
by any law which are not now fulfilled.

But the Government does not appear to be at all uneasy about
the unfortunate position in which the finances of these roads
have been placed under the requirements of the Thurman Bill.

In the report of the Secretary of the Interior for the year
1880, which has annexed the report of the Auditor of Railroad
Accounts, dated November 1, 1880, the Auditor, at page 17, after
showing that the payments rendered by the Central Pacific to
the sinking fund, from July 1, 1878, to June 30, 1879, had
amounted to a grand total of $798,454.31, and that $512,200 of
that sum had been invested in bonds, of which $119,000 were the
bonds formerly issued to aid in building the road, and that upon
said $119,000 the Treasury had paid and charged to the Central
Pacific a premium of $57,285.73, says:

The amount of premium paid is so large that the Companies have pro-
tested against the investment at such heavy cost. * * * The Honorable
the Secretary of the Treasury, in 1879, and again in June, 1880, informed
Congress of the difficulties which lay in the way of making a just and
profitable investment of these moneys.

In the report of the Commissioner of Railroads for 1881, he
sa s, at page 10:

The cash payments which have been required from the Central Pacific,
in addition to the detention of the entire compensation for services, is
$1,203,113.53, which amount it has deposited in the Treasury.

And he says, that

Up to the date of that report November 1, 1881, the Treasury had paid
out as premium on bonds purchased for the Central Pacific sinking fund,
$168,727.73.

He further says :

No investment has been made since April 6, 1881.

The Companies have repeatedly protested against the heavy cost of these
investments.

As high as 135 has been paid, as, for instance, $198,000 was invested by
the Treasurer in April 6, 1881, in currency sixes at a premium of 35.

113

He quotes from his last year's report, of the action taken by the
Secretary of the Treasury, in informing Congress of the difficulties
which lay in the way of a just and profitable investment, and

says :

I renew this recommendation of my predecessor, and agree with him that
it is due to the Companies affected by the Act of May 7, 1878, that the
Secretary of the Treasury be given authority to credit the amounts covered
into the sinking fund, with interest at five or sis per cent, per annum,
payable semi-annually, or, I will add, to invest the sinking fund in either
the Companies' first mortgage bonds or such bonds as have been issued to the
Companies by the United States.

The attention of Congress was likewise invited to this subject
by the Hon. Hugh McCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury, in his
annual report submitted in December, 1884, in which he concurs
in the views expressed by Secretary Sherman in December, 1879,
and in June, 1880.

In his report for 1882, the Commissioner of Railroads, after
stating the total cash payment from the Central Pacific to
December 31, 1881, was $1,282,264.44, which that Company had
deposited in the Treasury, says, (page 11:)

The Central Pacific has to its credit in the sinking fund $1,534,614.26.

And again repeats :

The last investment was made April 6, 1881, at which time a premium of
thirty-five per cent, was paid, but repeated protests have been made by the
Companies against the heavy cost of these investments.

On June 30, 1882, the amount remaining in the Treasury uninvested was
as follows :

Credit Central Pacific, $527,886 53

Union Pacific, 407,441 99

$935,328 52
On which the above Companies are receiving no interest whatever.

And he adds :

Which amount has since been largely increased.

The fund has evidently not accomplished the result anticipated, and since
April, 1881, may be regarded as having practically failed for want of suitable
investments.

114

In his report for 1883, page 12, the Commissioner says :

On June 30, 1883, the Central Pacific had to its credit in the sinking fund,
$2,404,115.86, and the Union Pacific, $1,632,697.59, and on the same day-
there was uninvested to the credit of the Central Pacific, $844,652.13.

The Commissioner again says :

That the sinking fund has not accomplished the result anticipated is quite
evident, and may be regarded as practically a failure for want of suitable
investments. * * * This is a manifest hardship to the Companies, as the
amount should be drawing a fair rate of interest, and correspondingly di-
minishes the available funds in the hands of the Government.

I therefore renew the recommendation, that if the sinking fund is to be
continued, the discretion of the Secretary should be enlarged as to the in-
vestment of the fund.

In the report for 1884, page 17, it was shown that on June 30,
1884, there was to the credit of the Central Pacific sinking fund,
uninvested, $1,089,159.75.

The Commissioner says, page 18 :

I again invite attention to the inadequacy of the present sinking fund
method of securing payment from the bonded railroads of the large and
rapidly increasing indebtedness. Experience has fully demonstrated that the
Act of May 7, 1878, for reasons which could not be anticipated when it was
passed, has failed to realize the expectations upon which it was based. In
my judgment it is clear that the Government will be best protected by the
reasonable extension of time, and by funding the whole remaining debt and
interest in obligations of fixed amounts and maturity.

In the report for 1884 the Commissioner shows to the credit of
the Central Pacific, uninvested, $2,020,909.13.

He says:

More than one-fourth of the sum now in the sinking fund is uninvested,
because, under the law, this fund can only be invested in Government
bonds, which charge high premium and pay low interest.

If larger discretion were allowed the Secretary of the Treasury, the whole
fund might be invested and at a higher rate of interest.

In the seven years since 1878, only the sum of $8,560,807.60 has been paid
into the sinking fund, which has produced in interest but $437,524.03. This
proves that the law of 1878 cannot accomplish the object intended.

115

In the Report for 1886, p. 34, the Commissioner shows —

That there had been invested by the Secretary of the Treasury

in the sinking fund for the Central Pacific, .... $2,599,800 00
That there had been redeemed of three per cents, . . . 1,761,800 00

Leaving present principal, . . . :''.",. $838,000 00
Premium paid, 218,963 73

Total cost, $1,056,963 73

which left a loss of a premium of about 25 per cent, on $838,000 of bonds.

That there remained in the United States Treasury uninvested on June
30, 1886, to the credit of the Central Pacific, $2,182,339.56.

He says, p. 36 :

In my previous reports it is remarked that the condition of the sinking
fund shows the law of 1878 is inadequate to the object for which it was
adopted, that of producing a sum sufficient to pay the debts that will be due
to the United States from the aided Kailroad Companies.

The following statement proves conclusively that all existing laws for that
object are utterly insufficient, and that additional and judicious legislation
will be necessary to enable those Companies to discharge their obligations :

The total amount of interest paid by the United
States on account of the subsidy bonds up to
June 30, 1886, $70,854,325 62

There had been retained by the
Treasury Department and cred-
ited to interest account, . . $21,091,383 32

Sinking Fund account, . . 9,658,713 10

Total, 30,750,096 42

Excess of interest paid, $40,104,229 20

The report of the Commissioner, dated September 13, 1887,
page 19, shows that there remained in the Treasury, uninvested,
on December 31st, 1886, to the credit of the Central Pacific,
$2,345,984.21.

There probably never has been so obtuse, unjust and unintel-
ligent a mode of caring for the property of a debtor as that
exhibited in carrying out the terms of this Thurman Bill. The
responsibility of providing for the Company's indebtedness has

116

been assumed by the Government. It rejected every plan which
the Company proposed. If any of the suggestions made by the
Company had received favorable consideration, the amount now
to be applied to the payment of its indebtedness would have
been increased by at least 33 per cent., without reference to the
proposed payment, by returning the lands donated, and this loss
has been incurred by the improvident manner in which Congress
and the Treasury officials have managed this sinking fund.

It cannot be charged that the Companies are in any way negligent
in the matter of providing for this emergency. In February, 1875,
Mr. Sidney Dillon, of the Union Pacific Railway, and Mr. Hunting-
ton, for the Central Pacific, joined in a letter to the Secretary of
the Treasury, pointing out, that from the small amount earned
from Government transportation, in comparison with the amount
anticipated, and the anticipated decrease in receipts from the
completion of rival lines aided by the Government, the Com-
panies would be unable to meet the indebtedness at maturity, un-
less by some wise provision of law. This communication was duly
referred to Congress, but for years no action was taken upon it.

The Companies offered to transfer back their unsold lands at a
fair valuation, as part payment of the debt, and to set aside, from
the net earnings, a fixed sum semi-annually, to continue until the
debt was discharged.

In the 44th Congress, 1st Session, on April 3, 1876, a bill was
introduced in the Senate (S. B. 687) which provided that "the
lands granted to the Company in Nevada and Utah should be
returned to the United States, at the rate charged by the
Government for adjoining lands, and the amount so realized
should be carried to the credit of a sinking fund in the United
States Treasury. To the same fund the Secretary of the Treasury
was authorized to carry the amount due and to become due the
Company fOr transportation of mails, troops, supplies, &c, up to
December 31, 1875, which, if not amounting to $1,000,000, was
to be made up to that sum by the Company. To the same fund
the Company would pay, on the 1st days of April and October
in each year, such a sum as, with the interest thereon, would be
sufficient, when added to the other sums credited to the sinking
fund, to pay off and extinguish the Government bonds advanced,
with six per centum interest thereon. * * * Interest on all sums

117

placed to the credit of the sinking fund to be credited and added
thereto, at the rate of six per cent, per annum."

A similar bill (H. R, 3,138) was introduced in the House on April
17, 1876, on behalf of the Union Pacific. Congress declined to
accept these propositions for the settlement of the debt.

On the day of the introduction of the Senate bill, Mr. Hunting-
ton, as Vice-President of the Central Pacific Railroad Company,
addressed a letter to the Hon. George F. Edmunds, Senator from
Vermont, in relation to its provisions. This letter was referred
to the Committee on Railroads, and ordered to be printed to ac-
company Senate Bill 687.

On May 15, 1876, Mr. Huntington, as such Vice-President,
answering a communication received from the Hon. J. Proctor
Knott, (now Governor of the State of Kentucky,) but then Chair-
man of the Committee on Judiciary of the House of Representa-
tives, requesting the Central Pacific to lay before the Committee
such proposition as would be agreed to by that Company as to
the creation of a sinking fund to meet the principal and interest
of the bonds advanced by the Government, gave his views at
some length as to the relations between that Company and the
Government, and although the financial position of the Central
Pacific has since that date been so much altered, yet that
letter so well expresses the various transactions between the
Company and the Government prior to the passage of the Thur-
man Bill, that it may be advantageously referred to by those
wishing to understand the true jjosition of the parties. This
letter was appended to the Report presented by Mr. Hurd, of the
Committee on the Judiciary, May 24, 1876, on resolutions relat-
ing to the Pacific Railroad Companies, and was ordered by th»
House of Representatives to be printed. (44th Congress, 1st
Session, Report 440, Part 2.)

It would seem that all efforts of the Company to come to any
understanding with Congress as to the mode and manner of
establishing a sinking fund, or the extent of that fund, were
futile, and therefore, as the Commission have seen from the minute
book of the Central Pacific, its Board of Directors, on January
30, 1878, adopted a report submitted by its President, and passed
resolutions establishing a sinking fund in the treasury of the
Company which would positively provide for the payment of the
entire debt due the United States.
9

118

The Act of May 7, 1878, provides, that the whole payment for
services performed for the Government by the Companies shall be
retained, and, in addition thereto, so much as, with the half
transportation and the five per cent, required by the original Acts,
shall, with the amount added by the amendment, make together
twenty-five per cent, of the net earnings. It also provides, that
half the transportation and five per cent, of the net earnings shall
be applied, as provided in the original Act, as a payment on the
bonds and interest ; and the remainder shall be placed in a
sinking fund, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury,
to be invested at interest, and to be used at the maturity of the
bonds to pay prior liens.

The Companies have paid into the Treasury all that has been
claimed under the Act. In fact, the Central Pacific has paid
more than its letter required. Mr. Miller, its Secretary, said he
has conceded the claims made by the accounting officers of the
Government even when they were beyond the liability of the
Company, because he supposed that all such payments would be
at once deducted from the debt due the Government ; or that
when they were covered into the treasury, the interest on a simi-
lar amount would cease.

It is extremely inequitable that such payments were not
so dealt with. But the calculations which were made by Mr.
Thurman and his supporters are found to fall far short of the
requirements of the case. The twenty-five per cent, of the net
earnings is found to be inadequate to meet the accruing interest,
so that, were the roads to run for one hundred years, the debt
would increase for the whole period, by the addition to the
principal of a portion of each year's interest. Owing to the
construction of the other trans-continental roads affecting the
earnings of the aided roads, the requirements under the "Thurman
Act" have been steadily decreasing, and this Act must now be
admitted to have failed in its purpose of providing for the
debt.

No doubt the supporters of this bill thought the funds could
be invested at about the same rate of interest borne by the
subsidy bonds, but by the fortunate growth of the financial
strength of the Government, the bonds bearing a high rate of
interest were called and refunded at lower rates, leaving out-
standing only the Pacific Railroad bonds or currency sixes,

119

bearing so high a rate of interest as six per cent. This has saved
millions to the public treasury, but it has effected a loss to the
Railroad Companies amounting to more than all the interest on
the sums paid by them into the sinking fund.

Against the ruinous rate of thirty-five per cent, premium the
Central Pacific protested, and, as a result of such protest, it
appears that there is now a large amount of cash which, with its
accumulations from payments by the Company and transportation
charges withheld, is allowed to lie idle. The bonds purchased
must remain in the fund until their maturity, when they will, of
course, be worth only their face. The premium paid is therefore a
complete loss to the Companies.

The low rate of interest at which the Government can borrow
is a disadvantage to the Companies, because of the high rate of
premium on that class of bonds which the Secretary of the
Treasury is authorized to invest in. These Pacific Railroad bonds
should be treated by the Government as its other bonds. They
should have been exchanged for three per cents; and the saving
to the Pacific Railroads for the fifteen years, from 1883 to 1898,
would have amounted to twenty-nine millions of dollars, or forty-
five per cent, of the total amount of the bonds.

It has been said that the Government did not reserve the right
to call these bonds. Tbat is hardly a valid excuse, as the same
legislative power which sufficed to pass the " Thurman Bill,"
denounced by Mr. Justice Bradley as " a blow at the public
credit,'''' and as " an assertion of the principle that might makes
right,'''' and as "sapping the foundations of public morality"
would have been equally effective to haye retired these bonds by
the issue of others bearing the same interest that the Government
is paying on its other indebtedness.

In addition to the amount in the sinking funds in the United
States Treasury, the several Pacific Railroad Companies have
paid to the Government, under the terms of the Act of Congress
ot 1864, by payments retained for one-half of the transportation
services performed and five per cent, of the net earnings to June
30, 1885, the sum of $20,412,193.92.

The interest accruing on the Pacific Railroad bonds is a for-
midable item in the account between the Companies and the
United States. The principal couldj easily Jbe provided for, but

120

the interest swells the amount beyond the earning power of the
bonded portion of the roads.

For instance, the net earnings of the bonded line of 860 miles
of the Central Pacific in 1884, ascertained by the provisions of
the Thurman Bill, were $1,212,526.45, while the interest for the
same time on theUnited States bonds amounted to $1,671,340.80.
(See Report United States Commissioner of Railroads, 1885, p. 20.)
And the difference is widening each year. The net earnings,
computed in the same way for 1885, were only $863,548.97. (See
Report of Commissioner for i 386, p. 27.) If these bonds had not,
by an apparent oversight of the Treasury Department, been de-
barred from calling and refunding at a lower rate, there would
have been a saving in interest to the Pacific Railroad Companies
of about $20,000,000.

The difficulty of settlement between the railroads and the Gov-
ernment is constantly increasing, as it seems the present rate of
payment does not provide for the interest. The Commissioner of
Railroads states, that should the present sinking fund method be
continued, the approximate result would be, that at the maturity
ot the bonds the balance due the United States by the Central
Pacific would amount to $71,000,000.

XV.

The Indebtedness of the Central Pacific to the
United States.

We will first consider the question of indebtedness from the
standpoint necessarily assumed by the accounting officers of the
Government, without reference to the equitable rights of the
Central Pacific which are recognized by Congress in the passage
of the Act of March 3, 1887.

It would seem, from the annual reports made by the Commis-
sioner of Railroads to the Department of the Interior, that if the
requirements of the Thurman Act are complied with, and the
net earnings of the Central Pacific do not materially decrease,
that, at the time the Government bonds mature, (averaging nearly
twelve years from this date,) the Central and Western Pacific
Railroad Companies will be indebted to the Government, for
principal and interest, over and above the amount deposited in

121

the Treasury to the credit of those Companies, somewhere be-
tween forty-five and fifty millions of dollars ; but in view of the
fierce competition for through business, it would probably largely
exceed that sum. The. lien claimed by the United States as se-
curity for this indebtedness is on the aided road, and the equip-
ment thereon, and the telegraph line from Ogden, in Utah, to
San Jose, in California, a distance of about StiO^o- miles.

The prior lien upon this property, assuming the interest is
promptly paid in the next twelve years, is $27,853,000. The
amount of this prior lien represents to-day the full value of the
aided road as measured by the present cost of labor and material.
With the present experience, improvements of tools and appli-
ances required for construction, it could be built for this amount.
Therefore, not considering at this moment the changed relations
between the Company and the Government caused by the Act of
March 3, 1887, it would seem to be important for the debtor and
the creditor to consider what is the best mode of meeting this
indebtedness, unless the Government desires to have the property
surrendered to it at the maturity of the bonds, subject to the
prior lien.

The Commissioner of Railroads has, in several of his annual
reports, recommended that the entire indebtedness of principal
and interest be capitalized, and that the ascertained amount be
divided into one hundred semi-annual installments.

He says, in his report for 1883, page 15 :

Should the decrease in the earnings of the aided lines continue to even an
approximate proportion to the decrease of the last year, it will be readily per-
ceived that the 25 per cent, of net earnings, to which the Government is
entitled, would be so reduced as to render this increase inadequate as re-
lated to the vast magnitude of the debt.

At the rate provided for in the Thurman Act it would require a century or
more to accumulate a fund sufficient to discharge this debt, and with strong
probability that by this method it cannot be done. Nor would it be practic-
able to increase tbe percentage without manifest detriment as well to the
Companies as to their patrons. The payment, by whatever mode it be col-
lected, must come from the earnings of the road. If the rates be too high,
the burden falls with onerous weight upon the business, and would work di-
rectly in the interest of non-aided competing lines.

It would seem to be of less consequence, whether the debt be paid in fifty
or sixty, or even a hundred years, if its ultimate payment be absolutely
assured, than that oppressive burdens be imposed upon the commerce be-

122

tween the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. A proper net compensation must
remain to the owners of the roads, if they are to receive the watchful care
and necessary maintenance which safety and success demand.

The construction of these roads has been pronounced by the Supreme
Court of the United States to have been a national necessity so urgent as to
admit of no delay, and confessedly involving the integrity of the Union.
The energy with which they were built is well illustrated in the fact that
they were completed in seven years less time than the limit established by
law, and at a time when the Currency bonds issued to the Companies real-
ized an average of only about 75 per cent, in gold. And they must be repaid
at par.

It was doubtless expected that the compensation for Government trans-
portation would equal the current interest ; that it has not, has been a disap-
pointment as well to the Companies as to the Government, but had the
charges for transportation continued at the rate prior to their construction it
would greatly have exceeded the interest.

It will be seen that the Commissioner takes the same view as
we expressed in a previous chapter on the working of the Thur-
man Act.

The Companies have performed for the Government a much
larger volume of business than was required in the years preced-
ing the construction of the road ; but charging to the Government
on a part of the transportation only the same rate as charged to
private parties for like service, the compensation is from one-
eighth to one-tenth of the amount the Government paid for simi-
lar service prior to such construction ; but in the carriage of mails
the Government has fixed an arbitrary rate, which is less than
rates paid by other patrons of the road, and less than the service
is fairly worth.

But various causes have arisen why the indebtedness resulting
from the loan of the Government bonds should not now be de-
manded of the Central Pacific, and Congress, with a view of
determining the equities that exist in favor of the Company, has
directed the Commissioners appointed under the Act of March 3,
1887, to ascertain —

The average cost per annum of Government transportation in' the region
now traversed by the Pacific Eailroads between the year 1850 and the com-
pletion of said roads.

The average cost per annum since such completion.

Whether or not the Pacific Railroad was completed in less time than was
allowed by law, and if so, how much less time, and if the United States
was benefited thereby.

123

The answer to these three sources of inquiry are contained in
the testimony of Leland Stanford, and in the Exhibits appended
to his answer, prepared by E. H. Miller, Jr., Secretary of the
Central Pacific ; and are fortified by copious extracts from the
records of the War and Post Office Departments to attest their
correctness.

The contract between the United States and the Pacific Rail-
road Companies required that the roads should be completed by
the 1st of July, 1876, and the testimony of Leland Stanford ami
Mr. Miller show they were completed on the 10th day of May, 1869.

That the United States were benefited in money by such early
completion in the sum of $47,763,178, which is explained as
follows :

Seven Years to June 30, 1876.

Traffic.

Freight,

Troops, etc.,.
Mails, ......

Total $7,645,195

U. S. Transporta-
tion Charges on
Central Union
Pacific.

$1,793,556
2,162,296
3,689,343

Cost to U. S. at I saving to U. S.
rates paid prior to June 30 1876
to Railroads.

$15,509,977
18,698,671
21,199,725

$13,716,421
16,536,375

17,510,382

$55,408,373

$47,763,178

Of this sum so saved, the proportion of the Central Pacific is
$21,5)71,062.

That the difference between the cost of Government transpor-
tation in the region now traversed by the Pacific Railroad between
the year 1850 and the completion of said road, and
The average cost per annum since such completion

result in a saving to the United States of . . $139,347,741 25
which is more fully explained by the subjoined table :

Traffic.

U. S. Transporta-
tion Charges on
Central Union Pa-
cific.

Cost at rates paid
prior to Railroads.

Saving to U. S.

Freight,

$5,740,753 00

4,616,053 00

10,606,507 00

$61,161,307 00
49,178,967 00
49,970,780 47

$55,420 554 00

Troops, etc. ,

44,562,914 00

39,364,273 25

Total,.

$20,963,313 22

$160,311,054 47

$139,347,741 25

124

Well might the Commissioner of Railroads, in his report for
1383, say:

The saving to the Government has greatly exceeded the current interest it
has paid.

And he might have added, and the principal sum it will here-
after have to pay.

We can better show the equitable rights of the Central Pacific
by stating an account between it and the United States, as of
the 1st day of July, 1876, the day on which the contract re-
quired the Pacific Railroad to be completed. It would be more
equitable to the Company to state it annually after the completion
of the road, but the following is most favorable to the Govern-
ment :

The bonds issued to the Central Pacific amounted to $25,885,120
" " " Western Pacific " " 1,9' 0,560

$27,885,680

Interest accrued, less credits to July 1, 1 876, as shown

in the Public Debt statement of June 30, 1876, . 12,180,833

$40,066,518
Deduct Central Pacific proportion of the sura of
$47,763,178, saved to the United States between
May 10, 1869, and July 1, 1876, say 46 per cent., 21,971,062

Would leave due to the United States, for principal

and interest, July 1, 1876, . . $18,095,456

If the Central Pacific proportion of the saving to the United
States, prior to the 1st day of July, 1«76, was the only deduction
to be offset against the claim of the Government, then the
annual interest to be thereafter charged against the Company
would be only $1,085,727.36, instead of $1,553,107.20, now an-
nually booked against it, and the lesser sum would have been
annually cleared by the Government transportation, and the pay-
ments under the Thurman Bill ; but the Company is entitled to
other deductions.

If the above account had been stated, with annual deductions
of the amount saved by the Government, the balance due to it,
for principal and interest, on July 1, 1876, would be $13,583,887.

125

There is another branch of inquiry which Congress has directed
the Commissioners to pursue :

What discount the_Pacific Railroad and its several branches were forced
"to make, in disposing of the bonds guaranteed by the Government, to obtain
the gold coin which was the currency of the country through which the
.greater part of said roads pass.

Governor Stanford states the loss by discount at $7,120,073 od
And shows that the interest charged to the Com-
pany by the United States, on this discount,
would amount at the maturity of the bonds to 12,816,132 39

Making a total loss to the Company, if it was re-
quired to pay the principal and interest of the
Government bonds, of $19,9:j6,205 94

But the loss to the Central Pacific is double that stated by
Governor Stanford ; for the same causes that induced the sale
of the aid-bonds forced the Company to realize on its own
bonds, secured by the first mortgage; and as the latter did not
realize any greater net price, the loss is double the amount stated
above.

If it is to be assumed that Congress directed this information
to be obtained for a practical end, and that it intended to re-
imburse the Central Pacific for the loss it had sustained in meet-
ing the demand of the Government for the undue haste with
"which the road was constructed, then the proper mode of stating
the account to July 1, 1887, would be as follows:

Bonds issued to the Central and Western Pacific, . $27,885,o80
Loss suffered by discount, 7,120,073

Total, $20,765,607

Interest on this sum, 6 per cent., less credits to July

1,1876, 8,688,772

$29,454,379
Deduct Central Pacific proportion of the sum of
$47,763,178 saved to the United States, between
May 10, 1869, and July 1, 1876, say 46 percent., . 21,971,062

Would leave due to the United States, principal and

interest, July 1, 1876, $7,48-1,317

126

By this mode of stating the account the annual interest charge
would be $448,899, instead of $1,553, 107.20, a difference of
$1,104,208.20, and would have entailed only such burden as could
have been lifted by the charge for the public transportation.

But whichever mode is adopted of stating the amount to July
1, 1876, whether the balance of principal and interest then due is
$18,059,456 or $7,483,317, makes little difference in the result, so
far as the indebtedness growing out of the advance of bonds is
concerned; for if we take the larger sum, . . . . $18,095,456
And add the interest, at 6 per cent., to January 1,

18S6, 10,824,099

The balance due the United States, for principal and

interest, on January 1, 1886, would be .... $28,419,555

But at this date we show a saving to
the United States, by the construc-
tion of the Union and Central roads of $139,347,741

Less the amount of saving, shown be-
tween May 10, 1869, and July 1,
1876, 47,763,178

$91,584,503
The Central Pacific's proportion, 43 per cent., is $42,128,898

Add to this the result of the further inquiry with which the
Commission is charged.

If the United States, since the Union and Central Pacific Railroad Com-
panies accepted the terms proposed by Congress for the construction of the
Pacific Railroads, has granted aid in lands for building competing parallel
railroads to said Pacific Railroad, and if so, how many such roads, and to
what extent such competing lines have impaired the earning capacity of the
Pacific Railroad ?

The answer of Governor Stanford, supported by the Exhibit
furnished by Mr. Stubbs, the General Traffic Manager of the
Central Pacific, shows there are now eight trans-continental rail-
road lines in addition to the Union and Central, each of which,
competes, in whole or in part, with the Union and Central for the
traffic between the Pacific and the territory east of the Rocky

127

Mountains. All of these, except the Canadian Pacific, are in
United States territory, and were aided by the grant of lands, as-
may be seen in the report of the Commissioner of Railroads for
1884, pages 226, 227.

Mr. Stubbs estimates that the loss resulting to the Union and
Central by the diversion of traffic to the aided , roads was
$37,l32,35lt02, of which the Central Pacific's proportion is 46.
per cent., $17,080,881.47.

A further question, which Congress have required the Com-
missioners to answer, is —

If the United States have contracts with branch roads, controlled by
either of the Pacific roads, for carrying United States mails, and if so, what
service has been performed by them, and what money, if any, has been paid
for such service, and what remains due and unpaid ?

The evidence, given to the Commissioner, shows that unaided
roads, under the control of the Central Pacific, have performed ser-
vice (or the United States ; that the right of the Central Pacific to
collect for such service from the United States has been adjudicated
by the final judgment of the Supreme Court, but that the United
States has neglected and refused to pay, and that there is now
due for such service about the sum of $2,000,000.
. The Senators and Representatives who voted for the Act of
Congress of 1862 and the Amendment of 1864 estimated, that
before the maturity of the bonds the United States would benefit
by the transportation performed by the Pacific Railroad to the
lull amount of the bonds and interest. Mr. Howard, the Chairman
of the Senate Committee on Pacific Railroads, predicted that the
public transportation, with the five per cent, reserved to the
Government, would pay the bonds and interest years before their
maturity. Mr. Howard prophesied truly, for the figures show,,
that by its saving on transportation the Government had, at the
beginning of the year 1883, been made whole on the principal of the
bonds and the accrued interest; while, on the 1st day of January,
1886, the bonds advanced to the Union, Central and Western Pacific,
and the accrued interest thereon, amounted to $113,434,675.42;.
and between that sum and the amount saved at that date, as
heretofore shown, the balance in favor of the Government was
$25,913,065.83. And this balance does not include the transpor-
tation performed, or the moneys paid into the Treasury as five per

128

cent, on the net earnings between July 1, 1876, and December 30,
1885, or any payments made under the requirements of the
Thurman Act.

Mr. Miller has made an interesting calculation, which shows
that the entire saving to the Government at the maturity of the

bonds would be $259,040,430

That the balance then due by the Union and
Central, less credits for services and payments,
would be 104,397,370

Surplus saved, $154,643,0b0

Or, stating the entire debt, with interest at maturity, without
any deductions for payments or services by the Companies, as —

Principal of bonds, $55,092,192

Interest at 6 per cent., . . . .. . . 99,165,945

$154,258,137

Which deducted from total sum leaves . . $104,782,293

A net saving of which would have been realized by the Gov-
ernment, in excess of the whole amount of bonds and interest,
had the bonds been a donation, instead of a loan, to be repaid
with interest.

Governor Stanford, as President of the Central Pacific, has ad-
dressed to the United States Pacific Railway Commission, in
answer to its request for such suggestions as he desired to make,
his views of the situation, in the following language :

I desire to suggest that the Commission report in favor of the appointment
of a proper Court to consider the equities existing between the Government
and the Central Pacific Railroad Company, as inquired into in accordance
with the Act of Congress, approved March 3, 1887, and render final judgment
thereon. Then the question, what further legislation may be needed, can
be fairly considered. I consider that the Act of Congress directing inquiry
into the equities erects a different standard by which to measure the relations
between the Railroad Company and the Government from the purely legal
relation theretofore existing.

129

Such a report from the Commission, and the probable action
suggested by Governor Stanford, would appear to be the logical
consequence of the inquiries which Congress directed the Com-
missioners to make, and of the information elicited by such in-
quiry. There is no hardship whatever resulting to the financial
situation of the Government by following the course suggested by
Governor Stanford, or in giving effect to those manifest equities
which clearly arise from the information that has been obtained ;
to disregard the equitable considerations, which, it is shown, the
Railroad Company is entitled to, and should have the benefit of,
would be to inflict gross and manifest hardship and injustice
upon it.

It would be the height of injustice to compel this corporation
to pay to the Government the face value of its bonds, and interest
thereon at the rate of six per cent, per annum, in view of the fact
that the Company did not realize such lace value by an amount
exceeding 87,120,000; and that such difference, with the in-
terest up to the time of the maturity of the bonds, will amount to
about $20,000,000.

The Government spurred the Company to make this loss. It
insisted on closing the gap between the western end of the Union
Pacific and the eastern end of the Central Pacific as speedily as
possible. To accomplish this result the Central Pacific was forced
to sell the Government bonds for the best price obtainable,- and it
should not be held to sustain the loss.

To give effect to this desire of the Government for the early
completion of the road, the Central Pacific spent $25,000,000
more than would have been required if the road had not been
built with such haste. The Government had the use of the road
more than seven years before the time specified in the contract ;
and during such seven years, ending June 30, 1876, it saved
$47,763,178 ; the Central Pacific's portion of which is $21,971,062.
Now, is there any valid reason why, at the end of these seven
years, when the saving to the Government was ascertained, the
account should not be justly and equitably stated between the
Company and the Government. Is it not fair and equitable that
it should be? So far as the facilities furnished by the Central
Pacific were concerned, the Government had saved by their seven
years' use nearly $22,000,000.

It had cost that Company about $32,000,000 to complete its

130

road so as to give the Government the opportunity tor such
saving.

The money which at the end of the seven years was ascertained
to be saved should have been then deducted from the face of the
bonds, and the accrued interest ; and the Company should there-
after have been charged interest only on the balance.

Of course, we well understand that it was not any pecuniary
consideration that induced the Government to insist on the early
completion of the road. Every principle of good government
and statesmanship required that it make this demand. We have
heretofore shown on how loose a thread hung the Government's
title to its Pacific possessions. There were various matters of
foreign policy that might have led to war, the seat of which
would more than likely have been on the Pacific Coast, and until
the gap between these railroads was closed, there was always an
element of great danger if such contingency arose.

The public interest absolutely demanded that this highway for
the movement of troops and munitions ot war should be com-
pleted as soon as might be.

Is it right that the burden of complying with this demand and
securing the integrity of a valuable portion of this Republic
should tall upon these Railroad Companies ? And more especially
when, in about sixteen years after the completion of the work,
the Government had been reimbursed for all it had paid or could
be called upon to pay, caused by the issue of its bonds in aid of
the building of these roads.

This matter should be judged by the same rules of equity as a
Court would apply to a transaction between citizens. If one
hires another to erect a building, and by the contract a specified
time is given to the builder to complete it; but the owner comes
and says, u Since I made that contract I find my necessities re-
quire that I should have that structure just as speedily as is possible,
and I desire that you will complete it as early as you can, having
no regard to cost of material or price of labor." If the contractor
met the wishes of the owner, would he not be entitled to an
increased sum beyond the price mentioned in the contract, and
which was based upon such length of time to do the work as would
enable him to accomplish it with economy and with profit to
himselt ? In such a case, the Chancellor would, among other
things, inquire as to the value of the rents, income or profits ot the

131

buildiug during the time the owner enjoyed it previous to the
•contract date, and the result would influence his decree. Should
not the same rule prevail in estimating the amount that should be
allowed by the United States to the Companies ?

Now, in the case of the Central Pacific ; it is beyond doubt the
promoters of that road would have saved a large portion of the
assets at their command, and have had much less fixed charges on
the earnings, if they had been permitted to occupy the fourteen
years allowed by the contract ; but, instead of that, they spent all
those assets, and thereby increased their fixed charges, to antici-
pate the time set for opening the road, and came out several
millions of dollars in debt.

********

By giving effect to the information which Congress now has in
response to the inquiries directed by the Act of March 3,1887, and
in providing for the tribunal suggested by Governor Stanford to
settle the accounts between the Companies and the Government,
the true intent and spirit of the Act of 1862, and the amendment
of 1864, will be effectually and equitably carried out.

The intent was, that the Government should be reimbursed for
the principal and interest of the bonds loaned by the services of
the Companies, and five per cent, upon the net earnings ; it has
received such consideration in heaping measure, complete and
running over. For the services rendered to it by these roads it has
kept within its treasury more than the principal and interest of
the bonds constituting its loan to these Companies.

It is a maxim of equity often used in illustration, " that you
cannot eat your cake and have it ;" but that is the position in
which partisan advisers have placed the Government by their ill-
considered counsel.

The Central Pacific have already paid the Government in ser-
vices and money about $11,000,000; but, in addition to this and
the payments made by the Union Pacific ; at the time of the ma-
turity of these bonds, say in 1898, the Government will have
benefited in money by the building of the roads of these Compa-
nies nearly $105,000,000.

That the amount is not larger is due to the oversight of the
Treasury officials. The bonds issued in aid of these roads could
not be used as a deposit for national banking purposes ; and they
were not made redeemable before maturity, at the option of the

132

Government ; a provision which was a marked feature in all the
other loans issued at about the same period. It these bonds could
have been called ten years after their issuance, the rate of inter-
est would have been reduced from six per cent, to three, and the
accounts between the Companies and the Government would
have presented a different showing than they now do.

The benefits mentioned above that will accrue to the Govern-
ment at the maturity of the bonds represent only the money
saved on the business actually transported over the Union and
Central Pacific roads between the Missouri River and San Fran-
cisco ; but in this nothing is figured for the decreased estimates
ot the army caused by the building of these roads. We have
heretofore cited the language of General Grant and of General
Sherman on this subject, and we now add the testimony of Pres-
ident Garfield at the time he was a member of the House of
Representatives.

In the Fortieth Congress, Second Session, Mr. Garfield, from the
Committee on Military Affairs, House of Repi'esentatives, made
the following report :

The Committee on Military Affairs, to whom was referred a letter from the
Secretary of War, enclosing a letter of Lieutenant-General Sherman, dated
March 4, 1868, recommending Government aid to extend the Union Pacific
Railway, Eastern Division, as a "military necessity," and a measure of public
economy, beg leave to report :

That they have carefully considered the statements therein made, and have
found them confirmed by the following facts, drawn from official record :

The cost to the Government for transportation on the Union

Pacific Railway, Eastern Division, in 1867 was . . . $511,908 24

If the military supplies had been wagoned, and the mails
carried by stage, and the troops marched, (taking the ave-
rage rates at which the Government made its transportation
contracts for that year, as shown by certificates of the De-
partments of the Quartermaster-General and Postmaster-
General,) the cost would have been 1,358,291 06

Saving to the Government in 1867, .... $846,382 82
*********
But there is another consideration of economy in the public expenditure
as the result of constructing the road. Lieutenant-General Sherman has
testified that one-half of the military force in New-Mexico could be dis-
pensed with if the road was constructed, owing to the greater mobilityBof

133

the remainder, and the'growth of self-protecting settlements on the line of
the road. As his estimate of the cost of maintaining the two regiments of
infantry and one of cavalry was about four millions of dollars a year, the
Committee find that an additional saving to the Government of two millions
annually would thus be effected by the road. This saving, added to the
saving in the transportation of the diminished military force that would be
left in New-Mexico, and of the supplies to maintain them, including the
carriage of the mails and Indian goods and supplies, would, in less than six
years, reimburse the entire loan necessary to extend the road from its present
terminus ^to~°the Rio Grande. The Committee have had satisfactory evi-
dence presented to them, that west of Albuquerque, and through Arizona
and Lower California, the same or even larger proportionate economy in the
public service would be effected by the substitution of railway for wagon
transportation, with the result of an equally certain payment of the interest
and extinction of the principal of the Government aid long prior to its
maturity.

The Committee have also had before them the written recommendation
of Major^Philip H. Sheridan, that the Government at once continue its aid
to the Kansas Pacific Railway, in the course of which he says : "It almost
' ' substantially ends our Indian troubles, by the moral effect which it exer-
" cises over the Indians, and the facility which it gives to the military in
" controlling them. * * * * No one, unless he has personally visited
' ' this country, can appreciate the great assistance which this road gives to
' ' economy, security and effectiveness in the administration of military affairs
" in this Department."

As we have before stated, in the year 1864, when the Central
Pacific was completed to Newcastle, and in the year I860, when
the Union Pacific commenced construction, the Quartermaster's
Department spent $28,374,228 for military service against the
Indians ; these two years being a portion of the thirty-seven years
in which Indian wars cost the nation twenty thousand lives and
more than $750,000,000 ; nor is anything reckoned for the saving
to the Government on account of the altered or more peaceable
disposition of the^Mormons in Utah.

It would be difficult to bring to a financial standpoint all the
benefits which the United States have derived from the building
of these roads]; by their construction the people have been ad-
vanced in^civilization, in comfort and in safety to their persons
and property ; andjts benefit to the nation as a military necessity,
both of offence and defence, cannot well be estimated either po-
litically or financially.

It remains now to be seen, whether the Government will avail
itself of the- information which its Commission has collected, in
10

134

answer to the inquiries directed by Congress, and will proceed to
settle with the Central Pacific Railroad Company on the basis of
the equities which such information discloses. Such a course
would settle this controversy in a manner befitting the dignity of
a nation that has received so much benefit from the contract it
made with the Central Pacific Railroad Company.

If, however, disregarding that which appears from all the facts
and circumstances of the case to be its plain duty in the premises,
it shall use its power to scrape into its treasury other benefits and
other moneys, beyond what it has already received, it will spend
a century or more in oppressing and despoiling the inhabitants
of that arid and elevated territory lying between the Rocky
Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas, and in levying tribute on the
potatoes grown in the alkali lands of Nevada, on the wild hay
saved from the river banks of the Humboldt, and from cattle
that derive a precarious subsistence from the sage brush on the
line of the Central Pacific; for the completion of the seven lines
other than the Union and Central aided by the Government, and
of the Canadian Pacific, effectually prevents any profit being de-
rived by the Central from its through or overland traffic.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company present this statement
as truthfully showing the history of its relations with the Gov-
ernment, and proving that it has faithfully performed its part of
the contract, and has grievously suffered by the persistent dis-
regard of their obligations by the United States.

It now seeks the equitable settlement which the evidence taken
by the " Commission," as directed by Congress, shows to be its
right, and asks that it be made without delay.

ROSCOE CONKLING„
WILLIAM D. SHIPMAN,

Of Counsel.

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Full text of "[Railroad pamphlets]"

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